Read Online Queen & Country by Shirley McKay - Free Book Online Page B

his father? That he does not speak or eat? Does he have the plague?’ Hew inquired ironically. In truth, he found it strange. It pricked him into fear.
    The boy was desperate now. ‘It is not the plague. But there are soldiers in the house. They will hear you.’ He waved at the girl, ‘Go now, leave the breakfast things.’ She dropped her tray and fled.
    â€˜There are soldiers in the house,’ Hew repeated, ‘whose attention you do not wish to attract. Why is that, I wonder?’
    â€˜It is not what you think. My master is engaged in an important work. He has given me instruction that he must not be disturbed.’
    Phelippes had a temper, and was capable of sending his own servant damned to Hell. Hew felt a twinge of pity for the man. ‘I do not believe that you have told him I am here. Was that your instruction from Sir Amias Paulet?’
    Blue Coat answered miserably. ‘Sir Amias does not know how vital this time is. And he is not my master, with respect.’
    Hew said, ‘Even so.’ But before he could embark upon a more convincing argument, the door flew open from inside, and out came Thomas Phelippes, loud and in the life, calling for his boy. Hew found he was at last, absurdly pleased to see him.
    Blue Coat stammered, ‘Pardon, master, if we have disturbed you.’
    Phelippes merely grinned at him. ‘No matter, for the work is done. Run up to the house at Chartley. Tell Sir Amias to send down the post boy when he comes. For I have a packet for him.’ He saw the boy’s face, grey as the flap of his half-buttoned shirt. ‘What is the matter, Hal?’
    Hal stuttered, ‘Him’ , and Tom, for the first time, glanced towards Hew.
    â€˜Hew. You . Come, come inside. Come within, at once.’
    Tom had a mind that worked quickly. But it could not, Hew understood, have come at that moment to the right conclusion, or he would never have allowed him to have stepped into that room. Tom believed, in that moment, that Walsingham had sent him. By what other means could he possibly have come? Perhaps it was from tiredness, or exhilaration, he let drop his guard. Perhaps the fault was Walsingham’s, who chose to share so little of his workings with his principals, that they were never certain who was on their side. Perhaps it was, quite simply, that he trusted Hew. Whatever was the cause, he let him see the work he did, and, within a heartbeat, realised his mistake.
    Thomas had not slept. If he had undressed, it was to still the sweat that trickled from his brow on a warm summer’s night, his sleeves and doublet folded, cap upon its peg. The candles in their sockets had been burned down to their stumps, counting in the corpses fallen from their ranks the profits from their work. Phelippes through the night had been writing letters, though the letters he had left, in packets by the bed, meant more than what was said in them. Hew, who had spent hours on ciphers, understood at once.
    The packets had been sealed, and tied up with thread. There were ways, Hew had learned, of breaking a thread, and a seal, so that the fracture might not be detected. There were methods, too, of tying a thread, and of folding a paper under its wax, that ensured that those fractures were not un detected, and he had no doubt that Phelippes had applied those methods when he made his seal. On the outside of the packet, he had written the direction. Besides it he had sketched, with the last flick of his pen, an image of a gallows. Hew understood the mark. It was a warning to the post boys, few of whom could read, that the packet was an urgent one; post haste for life, it meant, and no more than that. Yet Hew had the impression that those few concluding strokes might mark in their decisiveness the closing of a game, and end in hang-the-man. Phelippes had left out a letter set in cipher, too precious to be trusted to the common post. In places, it appeared the ink was wet, but