The boy’s eyes glinted. “Nort, m’lor, ain’t never had cause nor come near them big teeth. I looked after our chickens once, but me Ma strangled them and that grand gent ate them.”
“Well, the little blighter’s honest at least,” muttered Rob from behind. “Coulda claimed a stable boy’s skills, just to get the job. But told the truth instead.”
“I’ll do wot I’s told, whatever you want, m’lor,” the boy hurried on. “I can learn. I’m willing. I works hard when there’s ort to do.”
“I’ve no need of another servant.” Nicholas looked him over. “But I dislike leaving you here with nothing to face but starvation. Board your house up, tell the mayor it’s for sale – do what you want. But if you choose to come with me, it’ll be neither comfort nor safety I’ll offer. You’ll get food twice a day, and a bed of sorts most nights. I’ll work you hard and expect obedience. Make your own decision.”
The child answered before Nicholas had finished speaking, and had fallen to his knees, hands clasped. “Wotever you tells me, m’lor, I’ll do and be grateful – wondrous grateful – until me dying day.”
Nicholas’ mouth twitched. “Don’t idolise me, boy. That wouldn’t suit at all. And there’s another complication. I travel with a lady who is my wife, and you’ll treat her with the utmost respect. But she’s not to know who you are. You are not to mention your mother to her, nor the gentleman who became your mother’s lover. Do you understand?”
The boy shook his head. “Not rightly m’lor.”
“Neither my wife nor any other person we meet from now on can know you are the son of the woman lately killed while in the arms of Baron Wrotham. That is precisely what I mean. Do you understand now?”
The boy turned the shake of his head to a nod, staring from beneath his increasingly tangled mop of dun hair. Rob said, “And wot is this urchin’s name, anyway?”
Finally rising from his position of supplication, the child said, “Wolt, sir, being as me Ma called me Walter, if it pleases you.”
“Don’t please me none,” decided Rob. He turned to Nicholas. “Does it please you then, m’lor?”
“Not particularly,” Nicholas smiled. “But I doubt I’ll remember it anyway. So, boy,” he held out his hand, offering the three silver pennies, “I shall send Rob here to collect you before sundown today. In the meantime, eat and buy yourself some shoes and an oiled cape. Arrange whatever you wish regarding this house, and then wait for me. If you’re not here at sunset, I shall presume you’ve changed your mind and have no wish to join me. In which case, keep the money and organise you own life.”
“I’ll be ’ere, m’lor, no doubt nor nuffin’ save death’ll keep me gone.” The child was shivering, although the afternoon outside was warm.
“Well, try not to die,” suggested Nicholas, “since that would seem a shame just as your life is about to improve.” He thought a moment as he turned towards the door, then said, “Not that improvements are all that likely, come to think of it. But I won’t let you starve.”
Back out in the sunshine, Rob said, “You keep this up, m’lor, and we’ll soon have a whole bloody retinue of ragamuffins and thieves.”
“I have you,” Nicholas pointed out, foot to the stirrup as he remounted. David had been waiting in the alley, holding the horses. “Might as well collect others of the same. Now – I need to talk to the sheriff. Then back to the inn.”
The next day they took the road early and headed south east for London. Emeline did not remark on the addition of a skinny rag tail brat who clung astride the baggage horse, trailing well behind in the dust kicked up by other hooves. Magpies were chittering in the branches above their heads, and a sweet smell of hawthorn floated on the sunbeams. The party stopped midday for dinner, when Nicholas ordered apple codlings and watched his wife eat six. They did not stop for the night until late, and the tavern was a bedraggled affair with its thatch half tumbled and a scurry of mice in the upper beams.
Nicholas made love to his wife and kissed her gently as she regained her breath, tucking her in with apologies for the smell of mouse piss on the counterpane. He then retraced his steps downstairs to speak with David. Emeline was asleep when he finally returned to the small chamber, which is what he had hoped for. They left again very early the next day, just as a pearly dawn peeped over the still darkened hills.
They skirted townships and marketplaces, sometimes travelling the back lanes away from the jumble of traffic, ox carts and flocks of sheep, having no wish to advertise their party and their destination. But they stopped each day for food and retired to some convenient hostelry each night, never too late for a hot supper and a bed before the fatigue of travelling turned to utter exhaustion. But Emeline wilted as the horses plodded, and was glad when their road took them into shade and over streams where the horses stopped, thirsty and eager to drink. “Tired, my love?” Nicholas asked her as they dismounted in the cool by the grassy damp banks of the river they had forded. “Rest here then, or stretch your legs as you wish. There’s ale in the sumpter’s panniers, and oat biscuits too, if you want them.”
“Tired? How could I be tired?” Emeline shrugged, leaning back against the mossy trunk of an oak, its roots in the shallows. “When the journey is so pleasant and so leisurely, and my husband so conversational and such an attentive companion that I’m barely conscious of being away from home.”
“I know. We’re all weary, little one.” Nicholas smiled, but his face was grey and lined and there were purpled smudges beneath his eyes. The deep scar across his face seemed to have burrowed deeper, as if the flesh had shrunk around it. “But this is how I travel, if I travel at all, and indeed I’ve eased my usual pace only for you. Would you have us a month on the road, with all the local gossip recounting our names and direction and our presence known in every village before we arrive?”
“Would it matter?” She stared at the horses, noses to the water, and wished she might do the same with her toes. “I thought travelling with Papa was tiring, but it was never as – abandoned – as this.”
He laughed. “You seem always to fear abandonment. So do you want our route known ahead and our arrival expected, with children running behind to beg for pennies every mile we ride?”
“It’s a bath I want.”
“When we reach the Strand House.” He extracted the sack of ale and brought it to her. “First I need to make sure no one else is staying there, then I’ll settle you in comfort at last. In the meantime, we ride, we sweat, we eat ill cooked meals at ill cleaned taverns, and we make good speed in anonymity. Should I have warned you of the disadvantages before you chose to come with me?”
“You did,” she sighed. “I didn’t really believe you. Surely we’re respectable enough people, so I don’t understand the need for anonymity. Are we robbers, to hide our names and titles?”
“When I leave you sometimes on the road, I go to meet others.” He shook his head. “I have – I call them errands – call them what you will. For the business I do, I need contacts and friends in many places, and this is a useful time to reseal those friendships, which can prove important to me in the future. And those I meet up with are neither lords nor ladies, but invariably folk who prefer to keep their own identities quiet. So we travel my way, my love, whether you approve or not.”
It was four days later when they came to the capital, and Emeline saw London for the first time. Not yet wishing to be recognised in Westminster or expected at court, Nicholas had first followed Watling Street from the west, and then branched north along Tyburn Way to the city wall at Newgate. The prison building and its great square gateway menaced those who entered London beneath its high iron portcullis, and the wailing, whining misery reeked into stone and earth and air all around. The place stank. Emeline shivered, keeping her palfrey closer to her husband’s side. There had been neither hanging nor visible remains at Tyburn junction itself, but each step of the road had seemed increasingly sad, as though only death claimed the path. They had crossed the River Fleet, busy with barges, but the water had slunk in smelly gurgles, brown as her horse’s big weary eyes. Then the final stage, and Newgate prison’s menace was gone into the sunshine.