By the time I reached Walsingham’s house I had worked myself into a sweat of fear. However, Cassie was calmly waiting for me in the courtyard, near the bottom of the back stairs. He was a taciturn man, drab and unremarkable, the ideal servant for a man like Phelippes. He could go about the secret affairs of his master and Walsingham and no one would notice him. He blended so effortlessly into the background as to be nearly invisible.
‘Here is a further purse of coin for you, Master Alvarez,’ he said. ‘And if you will follow me round to the stable, I have had a horse saddled for you. We can put your baggage in a saddlebag, but how will you carry your lute?’
‘There is a longer strap attached to the case,’ I said. ‘I can sling it over my back. That will be the safest way.’
He nodded. As we crossed the courtyard and went through the archway to the stables, he handed me two small packets.
‘These are the letters of recommendation which you are to give to Sir Damian,’ he said, ‘and in here you will find a map of the way to Hartwell Hall, as well as another showing the shortest route from there to Barn Elms, should you need to leave in a hurry.’
I thanked him. I would make sure I committed that second map to memory, so that I would not have to depend on reading it should I need – as he put it – to leave in a hurry. My mouth felt dry and I swallowed painfully.
The stables, like everything else under Sir Francis’s direction, were immaculate. The sun shone in through the open windows, a light breeze kept the place cool and fresh. The stalls had already been mucked out and the horses’ coats gleamed with grooming.
‘This is the horse Sir Francis has selected for you,’ Cassie said, leading me up to an unprepossessing piebald. ‘He thought it best you should not have a mount which suggested wealth, as that might arouse suspicion.’
I had been disappointed at first sight of the animal, but I could appreciate the common sense in that.
‘Besides,’ Cassie allowed himself a small smile, ‘Hector here may not look the part, but he is the fleetest of foot of any horse in this stable. His sire was of Arab extraction. He gets his colouring from his dam. Sir Francis also felt that a swift horse might be of more importance to you than a handsome one.’
The horse poked his head over the half-door of his stall at me. It was a fine-boned, narrow head, with alert ears and a wise, liquid eye.
I had ridden little since we had come to London, being obliged to go everywhere on foot, but I suppose it is not a skill one forgets. During those summers at my grandparents’ solar I had ridden regularly around the estate with my grandfather. I might not have his breeder’s instinct for a horse, but I could read intelligence in Hector’s eye.
‘Well, my lad,’ I said, running my hand over his neck and rubbing the silky skin beneath his rough forelock, ‘are you as courageous as your classical namesake? Let us hope you will not be required to prove it.’
Hector was already saddled and bridled, and a groom led him out of his stall, where Cassie helped me strap my pack inside one saddlebag. He called to a stable lad to fetch food which had been prepared for me and pack it into the other. I slung my lute over my back and wriggled my shoulders until it was positioned firmly, then led Hector out to the mounting block. The purse and the two packets of papers I distributed amongst my pockets. I would wait until after I had crossed London Bridge to study the route to Hartwell Hall. There was only one way to start a journey into Surrey: over the Thames to Southwark.
The groom opened the larger gate out of the stableyard as I mounted. There could be no turning back now. My stomach churned with a mixture of fear and excitement. Could I do this? I must. I raised my hand in farewell to Cassie and the groom and rode out into the street. Sir Francis’s office window faced out in this direction. I twisted to look over my shoulder, but there was no one at the window. Ahead lay the Bridge, and beyond the Bridge, Surrey and my destination.
It was a fine day for a ride into the country, free of the crowds of London and the stink of so many people pressed together, which always grew in potency as the warm weather arrived. First, however, I had to negotiate the shoving crowds of the Bridge on a strange horse. I wished I could have had more time to get to know him, but I had been ashamed to ask if I might take him for a turn before setting out. Pride, yes. And I might pay the price in worse humiliation if the horse shied at the raucous cries, the bad-tempered pushing, and the crowded carts that often jammed against each other in the narrower parts of the Bridge, where jutting extensions to the houses had illegally restricted the thoroughfare even more than usual in recent years. Then there were the fly-by-night traders who set up makeshift stalls when the constables’ backs were turned, ready to pack up in haste and run off if any were seen approaching. They sold crude toys and handkerchiefs and paste jewellery and cheap pots and pans that would burn through as soon as they were put on the fire. Their hope was to catch gullible visitors coming to the city for the first time. Londoners, wise to their ways, would never purchase from these cheapjacks.
Despite the noise and the crowds that filled the Bridge even this early in the morning, Hector plodded calmly across it, only showing by the swivelling of his ears that he took any notice of all this hurly-burly. We stepped down off the Bridge, under the gatehouse, where as usual I averted my eyes from its grisly ornaments of severed heads. Hector shook his mane, and I could feel the ripple under his skin as he seemed to say, ‘We are well rid of all that. Now let us get on our way.’
It was still close riding, however. The road south was well made up and gravelled, but it ran through the crowded district of Southwark. I had had no occasion to come here since my visit to the Marshalsea with Simon, but I did not turn in that direction now. Instead I headed south along the main road, past the close-packed houses and the many small businesses which were springing up here, away from the limits of the City with its Guilds and the restrictions on trade imposed by the City Council. I caught the stench of tanneries and dye works as we headed further away from the river. There were blacksmiths sweating over their forges and tinsmiths tapping away at vessels of every shape and size. Spinners, weavers, cordwainers, cheap tailors, saddlers, eel-smokers, ale-wives – every trade imaginable seemed to be flourishing here. As we emerged at last from the final straggle of buildings which marked the end of Southwark, I even saw a brickworks a short way from the road, with its kilns and its stacks of fired and unfired bricks.
Once again Hector shook his head, as though to clear it of all those city smells and sounds and gathered himself as if he expected me to urge him to a canter now. However, I needed to study my map first, so I stopped under the branches of a large chestnut, which was holding up its clusters of green buds, not quite ready to burst into bloom yet. The ground all around was scattered with the sticky husks these trees shed before they bloom. Even as I sat there, the breeze brought down more to lodge in my hair and the horse’s mane.
The map was clear enough. It marked several villages through which I must pass before branching off to the left along a crossroads. The road curved right first, so that left branch would lead to the southeast, I thought, before passing through two more villages and leading to Hartwell Hall. The same crossroads, if followed to the right, the west, would take me to Barn Elms, running parallel to the river, but some way south of it. On the map there was nothing but a small arrow to indicate Barn Elms. I unfolded the second map. This showed the buildings of Hartwell Hall in detail, with the main road leading to the front and a smaller track which started at the back premises, where I supposed the stables might be. Someone had written, in very small letters next to this track: ‘Take this way’.