I followed it with my finger. It led across the estate, skirting the fields, then entered what was clearly a wood, indicated by tiny sketches of trees, to emerge on the other side and run along the edge of a small lake. I shut my eyes and pictured the route in my mind: Out of the buildings at the back, turn right along the fields, through the woods. Then the lake would be on my left. I opened my eyes again. After the lake the track entered another wood, to emerge this time beside a river – which probably fed the lake – where a small drawing of a building was labelled ‘Mill’. After that the track crossed a road, perhaps the road I was following at the moment, ran clearly over unmarked ground, then past more fields, entering another estate, this time marked ‘Barn Elms’, where I needed to turn right, and again approach the house from the outbuildings. I shut my eyes again and rehearsed the whole route in my mind. Not too difficult. And well away from prying eyes. I folded up this map and tucked it inside my doublet. It would not do to leave it lying about, revealing my connection to Walsingham.
I returned to the first map. Once I had found the crossroads it was a straightforward road leading through those two other villages, the first called Bishops Hartwell, the second, Great Hartwell, then across a bridge and up to Hartwell Hall. I folded this map and returned it to my outside pocket. No need to hide this one.
More of the sticky husks had fallen while I was studying the maps. I picked them out of my hair, then out of the horse’s mane. They stuck like glue.
‘Very well, Hector,’ I said, for he was clearly becoming impatient with all this waiting about, ‘now you can have your head.’
As I urged him forward, he broke into a slow canter, as smooth and graceful as the noblest of the Queen’s stallions, quite at odds with his ugly appearance.
Once clear of the outlying fingers of London, the countryside was rich and lovely. Fine arable land was interspersed with grazing, mainly for cattle and horses. The farmland was too valuable hereabouts for it to be turned over to sheep, which were said to be eating up small farms and even whole villages in so many regions of England. The poor folk from many parts of the north, and even closer, in parts of the Cotswolds, were being driven from their homes to make way for the great landowners’ passionate greed for sheep. It was said that such men could treble their incomes (or even more) by replacing their tenant farmers with these four-legged inhabitants who produced wealth on their backs year after year. The wool trade was busy building England’s fortune. But the losers, the small farmers and labourers, were many of them flooding into London, hoping for work and not finding it, adding to the beggars and the destitute filling the city streets.
Surrey, however, was free of this blight. The sun was bright but not hot, the woods wore the first delicate pale green of early leaves, and the road was dry but not yet given over to the choking dust of midsummer. Hector seemed as glad as I to leave the city behind. As long as I could put the goal of my journey out of my mind, I could enjoy the ride.
After a couple of hours I dismounted by a small stand of willows that fringed a stream and let the horse drink, then hobbled him while I investigated the parcel of food I had been given at Seething Lane. There were two cold chicken legs, a luxury, for my father and I could never afford chicken. A pie had leaked a little, but I knew as soon as I licked the gravy off my fingers that it had been made with wine. Another luxury. There was an onion pasty, a piece of hard cheese, and a slab of cake, only slightly stained with gravy. There were even two apples.
I had not realised how hungry I was until I started to eat. I had taken very little before I left home, nervousness having stolen my appetite, but the fresh air had brought it back and I finished nearly everything, keeping back just the cheese and the cake. I scooped up water from the stream to drink, then gave Hector one of the apples.
It was such a pleasant spot I would have liked to linger much longer, but I knew that the Fitzgeralds had been told to expect me by midday. I found a stump I could use for a mounting block, for Hector was a large horse, too large for me to mount easily. I also realised, once I was back in the saddle, that certain unused muscles in my legs and back were reminding me that it was a long time since I had last been on horseback. I would be stiff tomorrow.
Before stopping, I had already passed the third of the villages shown on the map, so I now kept my eyes open for the crossroads where I must turn left. Almost at once I reached it. A slightly drunken fingerpost pointed down the way I must go, the words in faded paint just discernible as Bishops Hartwell and Great Hartwell. The road to the right had no post and I wondered whether Walsingham made sure that attention was not drawn to his country house. I turned the horse’s head to the left, and the sense of panic clutched at my stomach again. The ride had been pleasant, but now the real trial was about to begin.
About half an hour later I had passed through Bishops Hartwell (a large church and a handful of cottages) and Great Hartwell (a smaller church but about twenty substantial cottages and a mill, though not the mill on the Barn Elms map). Over to the right, beyond the fields, lay a belt of woodland, which might well be the woods shown on the map. As the road turned left round the village church, over a bridge, and then began to rise, the manor house came into view.
It was a modern, brick-built house, glinting with many windows, which suggested wealth. A long rectangle, three storeys high, it had six bays protruding along the front – more wealth – and a veritable carnival of chimneys sprouting from the roof, every one of a different design: spiralled, zigzagged, crenellated, chequered, decorated with ornaments of every kind, including shields, hearts and even the Tudor rose. Sir Damian Fitzgerald seemed to wish to proclaim his loyalty to his monarch from his very rooftop.
As I rode up the carriageway, past an orchard in full bloom, to the front of the house, a sudden thought struck me. Was I family or servant? Front door or servants’ door? A tutor occupies an ambivalent position in a household, and the social position of a household has much to do with it, as does the attitude of the head of the household. In Coimbra, the tutors who instructed us children dined at our table, but if you were a tutor in a noble or royal household, you probably ate with the upper servants. As I halted Hector, I wondered how I would be received here.
There was no need for concern. I must have been watched for. The great front door opened and a dignified man descended the four steps to the gravelled carriageway. Definitely not Sir Damian. Too old and too soberly dressed. His household steward, I guessed. He was followed down the steps by a fair-haired boy who nearly tumbled head over heels in his eagerness to reach me. Behind him, conscious of her dignity but equally eager, came a lovely girl, her golden curls flowing down over her shoulders, her dress, of green velvet stitched over with tiny pearls, a little too ostentatious for a country morning, or so it seemed to me. My pupils. At first sight I suspected that the boy, Edward, would present no problem at all. He was already grinning up at me and hopping from one foot to the other. The girl, Cecilia, was another matter. She raised a pair of deep blue eyes to me in frank appraisal, then lowered them modestly and dropped a deep curtsey.
‘Master Alvarez,’ she said, ‘you are most welcome.’