Traitor's Field (27 page)

But this room might do better. There was less of comfort in it than he associated with the old man. Perhaps that had helped him focus – a kind of austerity. George Astbury in his monk’s cell, at his devotional intelligencing work. A small room, white plaster and dark wood. A corner room: two windows on the two outer walls, one of them over a window seat. A plain oak table; a chair with brown upholstered seat, and a solid footstool likewise leather-topped. A fireplace, swept; a plain mantelpiece above it at chest height, with one anomalous brass candlestick at one end.

George doing his duty. George sitting himself upright in that stern chair, papers on the desk. George would have been embarrassed to be caught with anything – flashes of their occasional interactions as boys,
fifty years is it now?
– so if he worked here he’d have wanted his papers here. 

Nothing with desk or chair. The floorboards well nailed-down. The chair leather unscuffed by boots – until Shay stood on it – and the ceiling unyielding. The fireplace stone-backed,
and instinctively George would fear someone somehow coming in and deciding to light a fire
. He checked the chimney anyway – and found it bricked up, solid. The window seat hollow, but its front firm and its top held in place by the panelling under the window.

Shay’s mind tried to be George Astbury, while his knuckles rattled obsessively at panels and boards.

One of the slats of the side panelling a little loose, just over one end of the window seat. He picked at the crack, drummed his knuckles on the slat, worked at it with his hand.

The slat slid smoothly towards him and out. There was a small void behind it, rough brick and dust.

Enough for a few papers, but no more, and there would be no way to hold them in place. Shay went to slide the slat back.

And wondered again about the window seat. With the panelling slat removed, the broad plank would move along a fraction, and up. In a second, Shay had lifted it away to reveal a very satisfactory space beneath, at least a foot deep and about as wide and perhaps two feet long. He peered at the dust of the boards inside the space, wondered at the faintest square outlines in it. Boxes? Papers?

Withal, it was empty now.
Where is the book?
The few copies of the Directory were either still held by trusted men, or would have been burned if endangered. But the book was different: known to the fewest.
Where is it?

Shay replaced the seat and the panelling slat, and left, locking the room behind him. The hollow under the window would need to stay empty, too; he would find his own hiding place.

‘Did you find any skeletons?’

She was a light invisible voice in the window’s blaze, as Shay came down into the hall with eyes slow to adjust.

He waited until he reached the floor, refusing to be thrown by the first thrust and waiting to pick his ground.

Now she was a shadow against the window and, as he stepped forward into the hall, a figure of dimensions and colours, and finally a face.

‘My thanks for the use of the room, Rachel. All I need.’

It was a lovely face, sure enough, and it was watching him with self-amusement and precocious challenge. But a flicker of uncertainty crossed the eyes, as the conversation failed to go her way. ‘Did you. . . find what you were looking for?’ The fine chin was still up, provoking.

He waited until he’d shifted his ground, making it obvious that he was considering her face. ‘All that I need, thank you.’ He leaned forward. ‘One shouldn’t look for too much.’

He thought he’d made her complicit in his staying. She seemed to think she had gained a little ascendancy over him.

Rachel Astbury was altogether too pert.

MERCURIUS FIDELIS

or

The hone
ſ
t truth written for every Engli
ſ
hman that cares to read it

From
M
ONDAY
, M
ARCH
19.
to
M
ONDAY
, MA
RCH
26. 1649.

Downstairs again, in Anthony Astbury’s study and running his fingers along the spines of the books – more to stir thoughts than out of any insane expectation that the book he sought would be among them – Shay caught a glance of a face and turned, unsettled.

His sister. Now a portrait in an alcove. Politely reverenced; stored.

Ah, my Isabelle. Perhaps I’m glad you did not live to see what has become of your world
.

He turned, and Rachel was standing watching him. Her presence was a jolt, and so was the bold echo of those brown eyes.

‘You have the look of my mother,’ she said. ‘The cheeks; around the mouth.’

He tried to ignore it, began to move. ‘She was only half my sister.’

‘Even so.’

Shay turned fully to face her. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was often said. A far happier lot for me than for her.’ He forced a smile, and turned away.

‘Blood is the strongest bond.’ Rachel said it too loud, and he stopped. He turned to find her surprisingly close, forcing her presence at him. ‘Don’t you find it so?’

He looked at her seriously. ‘Sincerely, no. Not enough to be depended on. These last years have taught us that.’

‘Sir George found it so.’

She was speaking with a child’s petulant insistence, and a child’s fragile boldness of stance, and he felt anger coming fast. ‘Then he was a fool.’