Sea Change (33 page)

'You're not coming with me.'

'I'll go anyway and be waiting for you when you arrive. Why waste time when we have so little of it? We can be in Windsor by nightfall. It's my neck as well as yours. You can't refuse me.' She stopped and looked at him. 'Can you?'

Acting against his better judgement was scarcely a novel experience for Spandrel. Nor had it always been a disastrous one. There was the rub. Estelle's arguments for combining their efforts were sound enough. About one thing he was sure she did not deceive him. Walpole would destroy both of them if his son did not escape alive. And he would almost certainly carry out his threat to destroy Spandrel's mother. With time pressing and their interests aligned, it made good sense for them to act in concert.

But past treacheries and present doubts travelled with them in Mrs Davenant's fine black and yellow chaise out along the Exeter road that afternoon, through the villages strung along the route, dappled and dozing in the warm spring sunshine. Spandrel still remembered Estelle as she had been at the river-port in Rome, proud and stubborn and untameable. That was her true nature and it would never change. Strangely, though, she was relying on him now, confident that he could yet avert the catastrophe that threatened to overtake them. He had refused to say precisely where they were going or why, but even this had failed to discourage her.

They knew each other too well, in their strengths and their weaknesses. That was the problem. There was too much understanding — too much bitter experience — for any form of trust. They were together because they needed to be. And in the silence that Spandrel strove to maintain lay his best hope of remembering that there could be no other reason. But silence held no appeal for Estelle.

'You keep to the Exeter road, I see,' she said as they failed to fork right beyond Hounslow. 'So, we aren't going to Windsor. Our destination must lie somewhere in the southern reaches of the Forest.'

'We'll put up at Staines tonight.'

'And in the morning?'

'We'll see whether this is a fool's errand or not.'

'You're not a fool, William.' (Of that Spandrel was presently far from sure.) 'You may have been once. But no longer.'

'Wrap your cloak about you.'

'I'm not cold.'

'It's not your comfort I'm concerned about. Hounslow Heath has more than its share of footpads. I don't want your fine clothes attracting unwelcome attention.'

'Then drive the horse faster. We can leave any footpad choking in our dust.'

'We'll need him fresh for tomorrow.'

'Why? Are we going much further?'

Spandrel smiled grimly. 'Do you never give up?'

'Why don't you just tell me where we're going?'

'I'll tell you tomorrow.'

'Why not tell me now?'

Why not, indeed? Because, as Spandrel could hardly admit, he feared that, if he did, he might wake in the morning to find her and the chaise gone. And this time he had no intention of being left behind.

Tired though he was, Spandrel did not sleep well at the inn in Staines. The landlord had a single room only for Estelle, condemning Spandrel to share a bed with a drugget merchant from Devizes who snored like a walrus and rolled much like one as well. Not that Spandrel could have hoped for carefree slumber in any circumstances. It was hardly more than a guess that Mcllwraith was holding Edward Walpole in the vicinity of Bordon Grove, even if the guess had come to Spandrel with an eerie weight of conviction. If he was right, they still had to find the place and persuade Mcllwraith to release the boy, an outcome which did not seem remotely likely, however Spandrel argued it out in his head. All he knew for certain was that he had to try. And then, of course, there was Estelle…

'Wagemaker?' The surprise in Estelle's voice was matched by the frown of disbelief on her face. It was the following morning, they were ready to start… and the time had come to reveal their destination. 'Surely that was the name of the Government agent who died in the duel with Captain Mcllwraith.'

'Yes. It's his brother's house we're looking for. Bordon Grove. A few miles into the Forest, beyond Egham.'

'But why? What does Wagemaker's brother have to do with this?'

'I'll tell you when we find it.'

'How do you know where he lives?'

'I'll tell you that as well.'

Spandrel had never related Mcllwraith's story of his feud with the Wagemakers to Estelle. Keeping it to himself had been his small act of homage to Mcllwraith's memory. But Mcllwraith was not dead. And soon, very soon, Estelle would have to find that out.

The horse began to show signs of lameness as soon as they set off. They were obliged to turn back and spend the better part of an hour waiting on a blacksmith to have him re-shod. It was late morning when they reached Egham and well gone noon by the time they came within sight of Bagshot. The weather was clear and fine, a gentle breeze coursing like a murmur through the deep stands of the Forest that flanked their route. Spandrel should have felt fortunate to be riding in a handsome carriage with a beautiful woman on a perfect spring day. But what he actually felt was a growing sense of dread.

They stopped at the Roebuck Inn in Bagshot to water the horse. Spandrel suggested they take a meal there and overrode Estelle's objection that this was a waste of valuable time by pointing out that he wanted to ply the tap-room gossips for information concerning the master of Bordon Grove.

'What information do you need?'

'Any I can obtain.'

'To what end?'

It was the same, insistent question in disguise. Why had they come here? The answer was close now, whether Spandrel supplied it or not. He could delay the moment of revelation only a very little longer.

The wiseacres of the tap-room exchanged knowing looks when Spandrel mentioned the Wagemakers. A fresh flagon of ale between them sufficed to loosen their tongues. Bordon Grove had been a well-run and prosperous estate in the days of old Henry Wagemaker. But misfortune and mismanagement had been its undoing. The sudden death of young Dorothea Wagemaker (whether by accident or suicide opinion differed) so soon after her father's demise had sucked the vitals from the family and Tiberius, her brother, had subsequently proved himself to be the sottish wastrel all present had predicted from early in his feckless existence. Another brother, Augustus, had enjoyed a successful military career and his remittances were presumed till lately to have sustained Tiberius, their invalid mother and a soft-headed aunt who, together with no more than a couple of servants, comprised the household. Certain it was that the estate yielded nothing but thistles and vermin, being utterly neglected and overgrown. Augustus was reported to have been killed in a duel, somewhere abroad, a year or so before, so the family's fortunes could now be assumed to have reached their nadir. This doubtless explained why Tiberius had taken to filling his larder with royal game, earning himself a heavy and quite probably unpaid fine from the Swanimote Court at the rumoured bidding of chief woodward Longrigg, whose long ago courtship of Dorothea was sure to have a bearing on the case.

The name Mcllwraith, dropped by Spandrel into the murky waters of so much rumour and reportage, sank at first without a ripple. Then, slowly, certain memories were dredged to the surface. Mcllwraith. Yes, he was the last tenant of Blind Man's Tower, a folly on the estate, before it was abandoned, its windows bricked up, its outer staircase left to crumble. It had been used for a while as a store-house for coppicing gear, but coppicing was but a distant memory at Bordon Grove. You could hardly see the tower now above the straggling trees. Owls had long been its only residents. As for Mcllwraith, he had vanished shortly after Dorothea Wagemaker's death. And that, the stranger could rest assured, was no coincidence.

When Spandrel returned to the dining-room, he found, as he might have foreseen, that Estelle had already gleaned much of the same information from the landlady. Estelle had had no reason to mention Mcllwraith, of course, so Spandrel could at least be sure that that element of the story was still unknown to her. It was, as it happened, the vital element. Blind Man's Tower was an overgrown ruin. No-one lived there any more; no-one went there. But might not its very abandonment make it ideal for Mcllwraith's purpose? Where better to hold a prisoner in secret for a few days? Where else, conveniently close to Eton College, could he be held?

Marabout's map showed a lane leading through the Forest to Bracknell, passing Bordon Grove about halfway along its winding route. They made slow going in the chaise through the many puddles and deep wheel-ruts. The boundary pale of Bagshot Park — residence, according to Spandrel's tap-room informants, of the Earl of Arran — curved slowly away from them into the Forest. After that, only dense, unfenced woodland met their gaze to either side. They glimpsed a group of barkers working in a small clearing at one point. Otherwise, the Forest was an empty domain of greenery and birdsong and filtered sunlight.

A low stone wall, moss-covered, fern-shrouded and much broken down, became visible away to their right. Spandrel stopped to study the map before confirming that they were now at the edge of the Bordon Grove estate, if estate it could any longer be called, rather than an indistinguishable part of the surrounding forest. 'The entrance should be about a quarter of a mile ahead.'

'And what do you propose to do when we reach it?' asked Estelle sharply. 'Drive up to the house and politely ask Mr Wagemaker to release Master Edward Walpole?'

'No.' Spandrel sighed. The time had come. 'It isn't Wagemaker we're looking for.'

'Who, then?'

'Captain Mcllwraith.'

Estelle should have been dumbstruck by such an apparently perverse answer. Instead, she looked calmly at Spandrel and said, 'He didn't die in Berne, did he?'

'No.'

'I began to suspect something of the kind when you first mentioned the Wagemakers. I'm not sure why.'

'He's determined to see the contents of the Green Book made public'

'Does he know what the contents are?'

'Oh yes. I told him.'

'Poor foolish William. You told him?'

'Yes. Strange, isn't it? Yesterday you said with such confidence that I wasn't a fool.'

'You aren't. You don't have to be one in order to do foolish things.'

'Good. Because I'm about to do another.'

'Which is?'

'I think I know where he's hiding the boy. And I think I can persuade him to let him go.'

'How?'

'By convincing him that Walpole won't yield to his demands under any circumstances. The captain isn't a cruel man. He won't want to harm the boy. If we can persuade him—'

'We?'

'He knows what you are to Walpole. He'll believe you understand him better than I do.'

'I'm not sure he'll believe a word I say.'

'He must.'

'Yes. If all's to end well.'

'It still can.'

'Perhaps. Perhaps not. You seem to have forgotten that young Edward was seized by two men. Captain Mcllwraith has at least one accomplice, who won't necessarily share this kindly nature you credit him with.'

'Convince Captain Mcllwraith and we convince however many others there are. He'll carry them with him.'

'You're sure of that, are you?'

'I'm sure of nothing.'

'Except that walking unarmed into a nest of kidnappers is a risk worth taking?'

'You don't have to come with me.'

'If I don't, you're even less likely to succeed than if I do.'

'But the choice is yours.'

'Yes.' Estelle looked away into the world of green shadows beyond the tumbled wall. 'And I made it when we left London.'

The entrance to Bordon Grove comprised two lichen-patched stone pillars between which gates no longer hung. The drive they stood guard over was a mud-clogged track, thick with weeds, but still passable. The house itself was nowhere to be seen through the tangle of trees. Not that the house was their destination. The map marked the tower away to the north-west of it, on rising ground. And Spandrel proposed to make straight for it.

They left the chaise in a glade a little way into the forest on the other side of the lane, the horse tethered and grazing. Such pathways as presented themselves in the woodland of Bordon Grove were no better than badger-runs. Estelle's dress soon became soiled with mud and frayed by thorns. But she made no complaint and kept pace with Spandrel as he steered a course by map and compass up the heavily wooded slope. She, indeed, was first to sight the tower ahead of them.

It looked like the turret of some strange castle that had otherwise vanished into the surrounding trees: a squat, three-storey-high structure of stone and flint, with arrow-loops for windows on the upper floors and a battlemented parapet round the roof. That these were mere architectural conceits was confirmed by the open, external staircase that zigzagged up one face of the building, serving doors on each level, not to mention the large, domestic windows on the ground floor. These had been bricked up, however, leaving the tower blind in fact as well as name.

'There doesn't seem to be any sign of life,' whispered Estelle, as they surveyed it from the shelter of the trees.

'They won't want to attract any attention.'

'Then how do you think they'll react to receiving some?'

'I'll approach slowly, but openly. Let anyone who's there see that I mean no harm. Wait here.'