“Sir?”
“When we reach the residency, I’d like you to take Tewlis, and half his men, and be ready to lead the party to the barge at Issy.”
Fellowes is perplexed.
“You are not coming?”
“No,” Walsingham says. “I will stay here in Paris, to keep the residency as long as possible. In case of more incomers.”
Now Fellowes is crestfallen.
“Sir Philip might serve,” he suggests. “Or Tewlis himself? My place is here, sir, by your side.”
Though the thought of spending so many days by Isobel Cochet’s side is no mean consolation. However, Isobel speaks.
“I will likewise stay in Paris, Master Walsingham,” she says.
Fellowes feels a swoop of disappointment.
Walsingham frowns.
“Are you sure? Are you not worried about young Rose? Or will Rose not worry about you?”
A shadow crosses Isobel’s face.
“My daughter is with my father,” she says, her voice low and sorrowful. “She is quite safe, but— I will send word, with you, if I may, Master Fellowes?”
She knows his name. Fellowes blushes. “Of course. It would be my pleasure.”
Walsingham looks at him beadily, but they are nearly in Saint-Marceau now, on open ground, and before he can add anything they see over the shutters of the carriage a group of men dragging a screaming naked woman into a field by her hair. Isobel lowers the shutter and shouts at the French captain who halts the coach. A moment later, there is a boom of a gunshot from above, and one of the men in the field jerks his head to one side, and then falls away.
“What a markman!” Fellowes says.
“He is Scottish,” Isobel tells them, as if she has found a new milliner.
“The first time in my life I have reason to be grateful for the Auld Alliance,” Walsingham mutters.
Three horsemen ride out after the rapists. They kill two with their swords, or wound them so badly they might as well be dead, and the others scatter across the fields. Another shot rings from above, wounding one by the hamstring. The horsemen don’t bother to finish him off but ride back. The woman sits up, now saved, and tries to cover her breasts.
“Allons-y!” the captain calls, and the coach lurches to life.
Ahead is the residence, surrounded by a small crowd that retreats at the sight of the king’s guard. The caroche comes to a halt before the gates, and Walsingham calls out to Sir Philip Sidney, who raises his handsome face over the parapet, laughs at what he sees, then drops down. A moment later the gate is opened. Walsingham helps Isobel out, and they turn to thank the captain and the marksman.
The captain nods at the driver’s bench and clicks his fingers.
“Écossais,” he says.
The man watches them with a reserved, dispassionate gaze from his seat. He is tall and rangy, with a broad, freckled face, probably ginger under his helmet. He carries an arquebus of greater than ordinary length.
“Wherever did you learn to shoot like that?” Walsingham asks.
He says something that is utterly unintelligible. A place name? An insult? A threat? Who knows.
“Well,” Walsingham says, “please take this, as a token of my gratitude.”
He finds in his purse only a single coin, an angel, and passes it up. He curses silently, for an angel is three weeks’ wages for an ordinary man and will have to be accounted for. The man reaches down to take it without a word, and it vanishes into a fold in his doublet.
“Well,” Walsingham says, somewhat discomfited. “Good-bye.”
The man nods but says nothing more, and Walsingham can feel his cold-eyed stare as he turns and steps back into the yard, grateful to be safe once more.
The yard of the English residence is fifty paces by fifty paces, and it is now filled with carts, horses, dogs, and people, all milling around anxiously waiting for the gates to open, so they may start their journey to the barge at Issy. Smoke from a nearby windmill set alight and from the bonfire—to destroy any incriminating documents—hazes the sky.
Walsingham seeks out Fellowes, who is overseeing the creation of some documents they wish to leave only half burned—a letter from Sir John Hawkins, for example, which overestimates the speed at which the naval commander can build his still-unknown ship design by five times—and he takes him to one side.
“Oliver,” he says, “I have had no time to look at this, but you know the pains we went to get it, so you know how seriously I take it.”
Fellowes nods.
“I think it best it goes with you straight back to London, as fast as you can, to be placed directly into Lord Burghley’s hands. No one else’s, you understand? Not Leicester, not Derby, and certainly not Smith. Burghley’s and Burghley’s alone, when he is alone.”
Walsingham withdraws the package, sealed in waxed linen, and he palms it in through the points on Fellowes’s doublet.
“I still do not know where it came from,” Fellowes says.
Walsingham smiles. “We will discuss it all over something hot and sweet when we are both back in London,” he reassures him. “Until then, next to your heart, yes?”
Fellowes nods. They shake hands, one last time.
“See you in London, sir.”
“God bless you, Oliver.”
Neither notices Isobel Cochet until she is almost between them.
“Master Fellowes,” she begins, “I am sorry to intrude, but I wonder if it is not too late to take you up on your kind offer to assist me, and whether I might join you in your party back to England.”
Fellowes is delighted, Walsingham surprised.
“I have been thinking what you said about Rose,” she tells him. “I have not seen her for a month or more. A six-year-old shouldn’t be without her mother.”
And so it is agreed.
Fellowes is indescribably pleased. He offers to find her a horse. Walsingham leaves them to it and goes to find his wife and child sitting with the other women and children, in the bed of the cart by the gate. He kisses each, one last time.
“I will see you safe, back home in
