Sea Change (32 page)

'It was nothing, Ma. A misunderstanding. They were bailiffs who didn't know I'd settled my debts. And they were full of apologies once they realized their records were out of date.'

'Bailiffs?' Margaret Spandrel eyed her son doubtfully. 'They seemed more like, well, like Revenue men to me. And they didn't breathe a word about debts.'

'A hasty crew and no mistake. But that's all it was. A mistake.'

'We can't have this sort of thing going on now we've moved to a respectable neighbourhood, William. I have Jane starting on Monday.' Jane? Spandrel was momentarily at a loss. Then he remembered. The maid. Of course. 'How am I to keep staff if we have such carry-ons as this?'

'We won't, Ma. I promise. I've put a stop to it.'

'I surely hope you have, boy. Now, when are you going to get down to some work? Maps don't draw themselves.'

'This very minute. I have to see Marabout.'

'Marabout? Your father could never abide the man. What do you want with him?'

'A matter of business, Ma. He has something I need. Whether I can abide him or not, I still have to see him.'

Gideon Marabout kept a shop in Portsmouth Street, near Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he peddled more or less anything that came his way, from broken-down automata to wobbly clerks' stools… and 'maps for the discerning traveller', as he usually put it.

'Cheaper than hiring a guide and safer than leaving it to chance,' was another phrase of Marabout's that had lodged in Spandrel's mind as he hurried along Long Acre. If anyone could supply him with a more or less reliable map of any area he cared to name, it was Marabout. And this was more than a matter of business. It was a matter of life and death. So to Marabout he was bound to turn.

A few extra layers of dust on the stuffed bear still standing just inside the door were about the only changes Spandrel noticed as he entered the dilapidated premises. Marabout himself, a stooped and shuffling figure with strange flecked blue eyes the colour of lapis lazuli, abandoned sifting through a jumble of bent and chipped spectacles, gave Spandrel a coal-toothed grin and welcomed him as if he had been in only last week, rather than some time in the previous decade.

'Still not finished that map of your father's, then? You'll have to start all over again if you leave it much longer. Things do change that fast.'

'But not you, Mr Marabout.'

'No indeed. There has to be a still point to every spinning top.'

'It's maps I've come about.'

'Oh yes? Going a-travelling?'

'You could say so. How are you for Windsor Forest?'

'Well supplied. Not the call there was in the old Queen's days, see. This German King we have is no hunting man. Nor are you, though. It'll not be stag you're after.'

'I have business that way.'

'Then be on your guard. They say Maidenhead Thicket's thicker with highwaymen than trees.'

'What do you have, Mr Marabout?'

'Come through and see.'

Marabout twitched aside a curtain that looked more like a plague victim's winding-sheet and led Spandrel into a windowless, low-ceilinged back room, where a broad, shallow-drawered cabinet housed his collection of maps. They came in all sorts and sizes, ranging from fanciful impressions of the Americas to allegedly accurate street-plans of provincial towns. The light was too dim for Spandrel to tell one from another, but Marabout's eyesight was evidently equal to the task. He sifted through a well-filled drawer, then plucked out a large canvas-backed sheet and carried it out into the shop, where he laid it on the counter and weighed down the corners with four scratched and dented pocket-watches that came magically to hand.

'There you are. Reading to Egham one way, Cookham to Sandhurst the other. Every road and lane and most of the houses besides. Less than twenty years old, what's more, which is as good as yesterday in those parts.'

'I see no date.'

'No need. Datchet Bridge, look.' Marabout pointed to a span across the Thames east of Windsor. 'The old Queen had that built, in the year nought-six.'

Datchet Bridge. Spandrel's eye lingered on it. That was the direction Edward Walpole's kidnappers had taken. And there was the reason. They could not cross the Thames at Windsor for fear of being delayed by the toll long enough to be overtaken by any pursuit there might be. The Datchet route was obviously a safer way back into the Forest, whose bosky expanse the mapmaker had represented with dozens upon dozens of tiny tree-symbols. And the Forest was a place where they could hold the boy, safely out of sight, for the few days needed to force his father's hand — if forced it could be.

'What do you think?' asked Marabout.

'Not bad. Not bad at all.'

'To you, a guinea.'

'A guinea? That's steep.'

'You'd charge more if you'd drawn it yourself.'

'Every house, did you say?'

'I did not. But every house that matters, that's for sure. See for yourself.'

'You see more keenly than me, Mr Marabout. Can you find Bordon Grove?'

'Whereabout would it be?'

'Near the edge of the Forest.'

'Which edge?'

'I don't know.'

Marabout grunted and shook his head, but rose to the challenge nonetheless, as Spandrel had known he would. He traced a wavering circle round the ragged perimeter of the Forest with his forefinger, muttering, 'Bordon Grove,' repeatedly under his breath as he went. He was about three quarters of the way round when he stopped and tapped at the place. 'There it is.'

And there it was. Bordon Grove, family home of the Wagemakers. It lay about halfway between Bagshot and Bracknell, in the south-east quadrant of the Forest, no more than ten miles from Eton College. The boundary of its parkland was clearly shown and, within the boundary, additional to the inked square of the house itself, a smaller, narrower mark that could only be Blind Man's Tower.

'Do you want to buy the map — or commit it to memory?' Marabout was losing patience. 'I can go to nineteen and six.'

'Then you've gone far enough.'

'So I should think. It's tantamount to—'

The jingle of the door-bell caused Marabout to break off. Another customer had entered the shop, one more elegantly attired than most of his patrons: a woman, wearing an embroidered burgundy dress beneath a masculine-style jacket and fitted waistcoat. Her dark hair fell in ringlets to her shoulders. There was a white silk cravat, held by a brooch, at her throat. In her gloved hands she carried a feather-trimmed tricorn hat. She looked at Spandrel quite expressionlessly as she moved towards them, slowly removing the glove from her right hand.

'What can I do for you, madam?'

She made no immediate reply to Marabout's question, but gazed down at the map laid out on the counter. Then she said, more as a statement than an answer, 'A map of Windsor Forest.'

'This one's sold.'

'It will do.'

'But, as I say, it's sold.'

'No matter.' She smiled sweetly enough to charm even Marabout. 'I'm sure William can tell me what's to be found on it.'

Marabout looked round incredulously at Spandrel. 'You know this lady?'

'Oh yes.' Spandrel nodded. 'I know her.'

'This is appalling,' said Townshend, pacing to and fro across his office at the Cockpit. 'Kidnapped?'

'There's no doubt of it,' said Walpole, who might have seemed to an observer — had there been one — less distressed on his son's behalf than the boy's uncle-in-law. 'Nor any of their terms for his release.'

'How has Catherine taken it?' Townshend had little regard for Walpole's wife, but this calamity compelled him to spare her a thought.

'She hasn't.'

'What?'

'She doesn't know, Charles. And I don't want you to tell Dolly either.'

'His mother? His aunt? They aren't to know?'

'They'll be upset. Distraught in all likelihood. I can't have their feminine weaknesses brought to bear on the matter. I have to set aside my feelings — and theirs. I have to forget that he's my son.'

'But how can you?'

'I don't know. But I must. There can be no question of yielding to their demands. Can you imagine the consequences of publication? I can. Revolution, Charles. It would come to that, never doubt it. Blood and butchery. The city aflame. The King deposed. And you and I? The Tower, if the mob didn't get to us first. What would Edward's life be worth then? Not a groat. Even supposing his kidnappers released him, which I doubt.'

'What are we to do, then?'

'Find him. And rescue him. Before Tuesday.'

'But how?'

'I'm sending Horace to Windsor to organize a search. You and he and Galfridus are the only ones outside Eton College who know.' Walpole's two brothers, then, and his brother-in-law: so was the trusted circle defined. 'And I want it to go no further.'

'The King?'

'Must not be told.'

'He won't be best pleased when he finds out.'

'With luck, he won't find out at all. With luck, we'll have Edward free and safe by Sunday and those blackguards—' Walpole closed a fist on his invisible prey.

'He may be far from Windsor by now.'

'Yes. He may. Which is why I want you to conduct operations here in London. I want all the Jacobite bolting-holes and hiding-places watched. Discreetly, Charles. Very discreetly. If there's any .suspicion that you've found where he's being held, I'm to be told before anything's done.'

'I'll see to it at once.' Townshend made to leave, then turned back and squeezed Walpole's slumped shoulder. 'He's a brave and resolute boy, Robin. He'll probably escape without any help from us.'

'A nice thought, Charles.' Walpole looked up into his old friend's face. 'But I can't afford to count on it.'

'I never thought we'd meet again,' said Estelle, as she and Spandrel walked slowly along one of the gravelled paths that quartered the rectangle of rank greenery known as Lincoln's Inn Fields. A group of ragamuffin boys were playing chuck-farthing ahead of them. Behind lay the narrow mouth of Portsmouth Street, from which they had recently emerged. Under his arm, Spandrel was carrying a canvas-backed roll, tied with string. 'Did you?'

'No,' Spandrel bleakly replied.

'You think very badly of me, don't you?'

'I think nothing.'

'Your mother told me where you were. I told her that we were acquaintances from your days in Rennes.'

'And who told you about my days in Rennes?'

'I think you know. My benefactor. The lessee of Phoenix House.'

'Walpole.'

'He's not the monster you think.'

'He threatened to have my mother hanged as a thief this morning. I'd call that monstrous. Wouldn't you?'

'He fears for his son's life. And he'll do anything to save him. Except what the kidnappers demand.'

'Then it's hopeless.'

'I don't think so. You have an idea, don't you? You think you know where the boy's being held — and who by.'

'Do I?'

'Yes. You do. I can read you as well as you can read that map.'

'Maps? They're my province, Estelle. You're right there.' He looked at her. 'But the human heart? I don't know my way around that.'

'A rebuke, William? Because I settled for the best I could hope for when I realized the Green Book was out of my reach? Well, rebuke me, then. I have nothing to apologize for.'

'How did you bring yourself to his attention?'

'I was taken in for questioning when Cloisterman reported my presence in London. I'd hoped he might not have surrendered the Green Book by then, that he and I could…' She sighed. 'I was too late, of course. He was on the point of setting off for Constantinople and keen to oblige his master in every way that he could. As for the master, he was curious about me. Cloisterman's reports had… whetted his appetite.'

'An appetite you were happy to satisfy.'

'I don't deny it. Why should I? A house in Jermyn Street. Liveried servants. My own carriage. Fine clothes. Expensive jewellery. What I give in return is little enough.'

'An ideal arrangement, then.'

'An acceptable one, certainly. But now endangered.'

'By what?'

'The Green Book. He's sure one of us has betrayed him. Possibly both, thanks to your encounter with him not far from my door. I deny it, of course. So do you. We may both be telling the truth. But that won't help us. Not if Edward Walpole dies. Then his father will seek vengeance. And he'll wreak it upon us. Even upon your mother. The boy's not yet sixteen. And Robin has such high hopes for him.'

'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.'