Ross King - Ex Libris

It was more plausible, of course, that my correspondent was the true object of this scrutiny. Still, I was struck with the oddity of the situation. Why, if she had something to fear, should Lady Marchamont have entrusted her correspondence to a means of conveyance as famously unscrupulous as the Post Office? Why not send the summons with Mr. Phineas Greenleaf or some other messenger?

As I folded the letter along its creases and tucked it in my pocket I felt no uneasiness, as perhaps I should have done. Instead I felt only a mild interest. I was curious, that was all. I felt as if the peculiar letter and its seal were merely parts of a difficult but by no means incomprehensible puzzle to be solved by an application of the powers of reason-and I had tremendous faith in the powers of reason, especially my own. The letter was just one more text awaiting its decipherment.

And so on a sudden impulse I arranged for an incredulous Monk to tend to the shop while I, like Don Quixote, prepared to leave my shelves of books and venture into the country-into the world that, so far, I had managed to avoid. For the rest of the day I served my usual customers, helping them, as always, to find editions of this work or commentaries on that one. But today the ritual had been altered, because all the while I felt the letter rustling quietly in my pocket with soft, anonymous whispers of conspiracy. As instructed, I showed it to no one, nor did I tell anyone, not even Monk, where I would be travelling or to whom I proposed to pay my visit.

One day after the receipt of my summons, in the hour before dawn, three horsemen entered London from the east. They came in sight of the spires and chimneystacks as the stars paled and the clouds were mantled here and there with light: a trio of black-clad riders galloping along the riverside towards Ratcliff. Their journey must have been a long one, though little of it is known to me except those few leagues at the end.

They had landed on the Kent coast, in Romney Marsh, two days earlier, after crossing the Channel in a fishing smack. Even with calm weather and a level sea the crossing must have taken a good eight hours, but the landing would have been carefully timed. The boat's master, Calfhill, had been under scrupulous instructions and knew every shoal, cove and customs official along fifty-mile stretches of either coast. They put in to shore in darkness, at high tide, with the prow bouncing in the swell, the sail struck low as Calfhill stood in the bows grasping a long pole. At that hour the customs sheds further along the line of beach would have stood empty, but only for another hour, perhaps less, so they were forced to work quickly. Calfhill dropped anchor and, when the flukes bit, stepped over the gunwales and into the knee-deep water, which must have been icy even at that time of year. They disembarked without a torch or flare and scraped the boat across the shingle to the high-water line, where three black stallions had been tethered among the screen of osiers. The horses, snickering and stamping in the darkness, were already saddled and bridled. The beach was otherwise empty.

For the next few minutes Calfhill hovered, anxious and suspicious, as the men tiptoed back into the waves and scrubbed the pitch from their faces and hands. Overhead a skein of plovers sailed inland. Smells of thyme and pastured sheep blew out to sea. Only a few minutes remained before daylight, but Calfhill's passengers worked as punctiliously as if making their morning toilets. One of them even paused to polish a few of the gold buttons on his coat-some kind of black livery-with a wetted handkerchief, then, stooping, the toes of his boots. His efforts were fastidious.

'For heaven's sake,' Calfhill murmured under his breath. He understood the risks, of course, even if his passengers did not. He was an 'owler', a smuggler whose usual freight was the sacks of wool he shipped to France or the crates of wine and brandy he transported back. Nor was he averse to smuggling passengers-an even more profitable trade. Huguenots and Roman Catholics, like the hogsheads of brandy, came to England, while Royalists went the other way, into France. And now it was the Puritans who were fleeing England, of course; Holland was their destination. In the past six weeks he had smuggled at least a dozen of them out of Dover or the Romney Marsh and across to Zeeland or on to pinks anchored near the North Foreland; a few others he smuggled off the pinks and into England to act as spies against King Charles. It was dangerous work, but he calculated that if all of this distrust and deception held out (as he knew it would, human nature being what it was) he would be able to retire to a sugar plantation in Jamaica within four years.

But this latest assignment was a peculiar one, even for an owler of Calfhill's experience. Two days earlier in Calais, in a tavern in the basse ville where he normally received information about his consignments of brandy, a man named Fontenay approached him, paid half of an agreed sum-ten gold pistoles-and gave him patient instructions. It would be another good night's work. Fontenay had since disappeared, but then, at dusk the previous day, the strangers met him, as promised, in the sheltered reach from which, disguised as a fisherman, he normally set out with his hogsheads and-so far as he could ever determine their identities-the occasional Royalist agent or Romish priest. His new passengers had been puffing heavily as they clambered aboard. He caught a good view of one of them in the moonlight: a corpulent figure, red-faced as an innkeeper's wife, with hooded eyes, a sensuous mouth, and a gross, well-fed belly that would have done credit to a London alderman. Hardly a seafaring man. Would he take ill in the smack, as so many of them did, and retch over the gunwales? Amazingly, he did not. But throughout the ensuing voyage the three men spoke not a word, neither to Calfhill nor to each other, even though Calfhill-something of a linguist, as his trade required-attempted to draw them in English, French, Dutch, Italian and Spanish.

Now, still in silence, they were staggering towards the snorting stallions, the dry osiers crackling underfoot. Calfhill found himself wondering for the dozenth time which country-or which party within which country-they represented. All three seemed to be gentlemen, which was unusual, because in Calfhill's experience spying was not exactly a gentleman's occupation. Most of the men he smuggled were a foul-mouthed bunch of villains-bravos, bungs, cutpurses, nose-slitters, ruffians of every description, all of them recruited in the worst bawdy-houses and taverns of London or Paris and then paid a slave's wages to betray their friends and countries, which most were only too eager to do. But these fellows? They looked too soft for such rough-and-tumble recreations. The palms of the fat one, as he handed over the remaining coins, had been smooth and plump as those of a lady. Before he applied the pitch, a measure at which he baulked at first, his smooth chops had smelled of shaving soap and perfume. And their black livery, their coats, waistcoats, breeches and doublets, all were of a fine cut, even decorated, a bit ostentatiously, with a few gold frogs and ribbons. So what desperate mission could have tumbled them from their wine-cellars and dinner-tables and sent them to venture life and limb in England?

The three of them were now, at long last, ready to depart. The fat one swung clumsily on to the horse at his fourth attempt-he was accustomed to the aid of a mounting-block, Calfhill supposed-and then, without so much as a nod or a wave, guided the Percheron up a steep knoll. He was an abysmally poor rider, Calfhill could see that right away. He swayed from side to side, head bobbing, fat legs limply bouncing at every step. A man more familiar with carriages and sedan-chairs, Calfhill guessed. The unfortunate horse strained towards the cornice of grass, cleared it with a desperate surge, and began making his way inland at a canter.