‘Robin?’
‘He won’t give in to the kidnappers, William. He’d rather let his son be killed than do that. And if he is killed … we’re as good as dead.’
‘There’s nothing I can do.’
‘You’re going to Windsor Forest, aren’t you?’
‘Am I?’
‘I’m coming with you.’
‘No.’
‘We’ll make better time together in my chaise than you will alone on a hired nag.’
‘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?’
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The Sylvan Chase
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 McIlwraith 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 McIlwraith to release the boy, an out come 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 McIlwraith.’
‘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 McIlwraith’s story of his feud with the Wagemakers to Estelle. Keeping it to himself had been his small act of homage to McIlwraith’s memory. But McIlwraith 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 McIlwraith, 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. McIlwraith. Yes, he was the last tenant of Blind Man’s Tower, a folly on the estate, before it was abandoned, its windows bric
ked 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 McIlwraith, 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 McIlwraith, 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 McIlwraith’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 McIlwraith.’
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 McIlwraith has at least one accomplice, who won’t necessarily share this kindly nature you credit him with.’
‘Convince Captain McIlwraith 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.’
He set off, breathing fast but walking as slowly as he had said he would. The undergrowth thinned as he reached a track leading to the tower entrance – a broad, stout-hinged door at the foot of the staircase. Looking back along the track, which soon curved out of sight, Spandrel guessed that it led to the house. Glancing down, he saw recent boot-prints in the mud, proving that Blind Man’s Tower was not as neglected as some supposed. He turned and started towards the entrance. Still nothing stirred. A woodpecker began to hammer at a trunk somewhere close by. A rook flapped lazily from one tree to another above him, cawing as it went.
He reached the door. There was no knocker and rapping at it with his knuckles made little impression through the thick panels. He pounded at it with his fist and raised a muffled echo within, but no kind of answer. Then he tried the handle. The door was locked, as he had assumed it would be. He stepped away and stared up at the arrow-loops above him – then stumbled back in astonishment at the sight of a face staring down at him from the roof.
‘Who the blazes are you, sir?’ came the imperious demand.
‘I—’
‘Stand where you are. I’m coming down.’
He was a thick-set, red-faced fellow in a threadbare coat and stained waistcoat, a narrow-brimmed hat worn low and crookedly on his wigless head. He was carrying a fowling-piece under one arm that threatened to trip him at every stage of his unsteady descent. If not actually drunk, he was clearly far from sober. Spandrel had never met him before, but there was something familiar about him. And very soon the reason for that familiarity was revealed.
‘I own this tower. And the land around it. You’re trespassing, sir, and you’ll explain yourself, if you please.’
‘You’re Mr Tiberius Wagemaker?’
‘I am.’
‘My name�
�s Spandrel. William Spandrel.’
‘Never heard of you. You don’t look like a Forester to me.’
‘I’m from London.’
‘Then you can take yourself off back there.’
‘I’ve come a—’
‘Mr Wagemaker?’ Estelle’s voice carried up to them from the trees. Spandrel turned and saw her walking purposefully towards them. When he turned back, Wagemaker was smiling.
‘Is this lady with you, Spandrel?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then perhaps I should go to London more often. Your servant, ma’am.’ Wagemaker plucked off his hat and essayed a stiff-backed bow, presenting a patchily shaved head for their inspection. ‘You have the advantage of me.’
‘I am Mrs Davenant, Mr Wagemaker. Mr Spandrel and I are here on a mission of mercy.’
‘Mercy, you say?’ Wagemaker creaked upright and replaced his hat. ‘I shouldn’t have thought you’d have any difficulty extracting that from the hardest of hearts, madam. And mine must rank as one of the softest for many a mile. How can I help you?’
‘Mr Spandrel is my brother. I am a widow, as is my sister, who has a son at Eton.’
‘A credit to the family, I’m sure.’
‘He’s been—’ Estelle turned aside, apparently needing to compose herself. ‘He’s been kidnapped.’
‘Kidnapped? Good God.’
‘We think he’s being held somewhere in the Forest,’ said Spandrel.
‘Have you informed Colonel Negus?’
‘We’re not acquainted with the gentleman, sir.’
‘Deputy Lieutenant of Windsor Castle. If the Forest’s to be searched—’
‘The kidnappers have sworn to kill the boy if we approach the authorities,’ said Estelle. ‘We’ve had to let the college believe he’s simply run away. Whereas, in truth …’ She paused to take the calming breath that she so evidently seemed to need. ‘The ransom is beyond our family’s means, Mr Wagemaker. Our sister is beside herself. She fears she will never see her son again. Nor will she, unless we can find the place where they’ve confined him before the ransom falls due.’
Sea Change Page 31