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smelled of old straw. The reason for this was that it was actually filled with old straw – he had run out of tobacco. Next to him, Henrietta Slope was sipping a tankard of ale, a noisy business lacking, as she did, lips. Opposite them, Gamaliel Ratsey was reading a letter by the light of a candle. He had read it several times already and taken notes but the contents still puzzled him.
    “So what does it say?” Henrietta demanded at last. “It’s only two pages. It can’t be that difficult.”
    “Actually it’s in Latin,” Ratsey replied. “It’s also in code.” He set the pages down. “The letter contains orders,” he explained. “The traveller was a knight. Sir William Hawkins. A member of the Gentlemen Pensioners.”
    “The what?”
    Ratsey sighed again. “You really do know nothing about the outside world, do you?” he said. “The Gentlemen Pensioners are the Queen’s personal bodyguard. They’re closer to the Queen than probably anyone else.”
    “What? You mean…?” Sebastian had gone completely white. It looked as if he was going to be sick and sure enough a few moments later he was. “Do you mean the Queen sent him?” he continued, when he had recovered.
    “The Queen or someone close to her. Yes.” Ratsey nodded. “Hawkins was sent to find a boy, the son of Robert the Falconer. Somehow he knew that Tom was the boy. His orders were to carry the boy to London and await further instructions. And that, of course, is where they were heading when Hawkins and I met – so unfortunately for him.”
    “The Queen!” Sebastian Slope was having trouble breathing. His entire face was like a slice of damp cheese. “If Hawkins was a member of the Mental Intentioners…”
    “The Gentlemen Pensioners…”
    “If he was working for the Queen, there’ll be questions. I mean, when he doesn’t show up. They’ll send constables. And worse…”
    “They’ll hang us all,” Henrietta whispered. Her fingers fluttered to her throat. “Hanged by the neck!”
    “They’ll probably draw and quarter us first,” Ratsey remarked.
    “Oh Gawd!” Henrietta turned round and was as sick as her husband had been a few moments before.
    “It wasn’t us!” Slope exclaimed. “We didn’t kill him!” He jerked his pipe in the direction of Ratsey. “It was you! You shot him in the forest!”
    For the first time, Ratsey’s eyes grew dark. He was still smiling, but suddenly there was a chill in the room. The candle flame flickered and black shadows slithered across his face. “Whatever happens, let’s remember one thing,” he said in a low voice. “We’re in this together. If one of us goes down, we all do. If they’re going to build a scaffold, it’ll be a scaffold for three.”
    “They can’t tie us in with him,” Henrietta whispered. “Hawkins came here. And he left again. What happened after that nobody knows.”
    “Nobody except the boy,” Ratsey said.
    There was a long silence.
    “Young Tom saw everything,” Ratsey continued after a while. “He knows all about us. And if the Queen or her advisers were ever to get their hands on him, that could be very difficult for us.”
    “Where is he?” Sebastian snapped. “You had him! You let him go! This is all your fault, Ratsey.”
    Ratsey sighed again. He closed his eyes. Opened them. Then lashed out with his fist, catching Sebastian right on the nose. “We’re all in this together,” he went on. “And it seems to me that the one thing we have to do, the only thing we
can
do, is find young Tom.”
    “How are we going to do that?” Sebastian wailed. Henrietta took out a filthy handkerchief and offered it to him. Both the Slopes looked miserable and terrified.
    “We know he’s heading for London,” Ratsey said in a reasonable tone of voice. “I’ll follow him there. I’ll find him and I’ll kill him.”
    “You’ll never find him in London,” Sebastian gasped. “It’s a huge place. A vast place. I went there once with my dad to do