LUIS BORROWED A decent morning suit from his theatre manager. Hackett had stressed the need for confidentiality even now, so Luis pleaded attendance at a wedding. At that, he wondered if it might have been more convincing if he’d claimed he wanted the suit for an appearance before the magistrate.
Oswald Hackett, of course, looked peacock-magnificent as he gathered his small party at Charing Cross, where they would board landaus to take them to Windsor. Small: there were eight of them all told, eight Waltzers, all men, all about Hackett’s age or younger. Luis had had no idea there were so many in Hackett’s company. He recognized only one apart from Hackett himself: the tall, lithe-looking young man he’d bumped into in the forest.
There seemed no particular pattern to these fellows: some were short and others tall, some tough-looking and some not, some fair and some dark. Most looked as if they were of British stock, understandably enough. Only Luis himself, with the Mediterranean roots of his family behind him, looked markedly less Anglo-Saxon. And all were well kitted out, though some, like Hackett, looked more comfortable in their finery. Luis guessed that some were from rather more privileged backgrounds than others.
Hackett didn’t encourage conversation, and even suppressed introductions. He said sternly, ‘You’re not a bunch of new fags at some minor school. You’re here to put yourself in the hands of Her Majesty, for the purpose of all manner of sly and covert affairs – whatever my fertile imagination can dream up – and sly and covert it must be, given the nature of our shared talent. And in that case the less you know of each other the more effective you’ll be. For if I don’t know your name I can’t betray you, can I? Which has been a lesson learned by rebels before, from our own Chartists, back through the French when they took agin their king, to the Americans when they turned on the English hand that fed ’em …’
Even so, as they boarded their coaches, that tall, skinny fellow made for Luis and slyly shook his hand. He looked about twenty-five, Luis’s own age, and his grasp was stronger than Luis expected. ‘The name’s Fraser Burdon,’ he said. ‘Since we made our acquaintance already in the widdershins forest, there’s nothing much for us to lose by swapping names, is there?’
Luis introduced himself, and in a quick conversation Burdon ascertained how Luis had been found by Hackett, and recruited.
Burdon said, ‘As for me, I met the good Doctor up at Cambridge, where I’m pottering about in the natural sciences. Oswald was up there for a conference on the extinction of species, or some such – rocks are more my bag – and he spotted me “Waltzing”, as he puts it, when I fell off a punt – sooner that than end up in the Cam; I never was much of a hand with the pole. I didn’t want to get wet again, and I knew it was dry just there widdershins. Thought nobody was watching – careless, that. Still, here we are …’
Then they boarded the coach, with Hackett, and they didn’t get the chance to speak again.
Windsor Castle seemed to Luis from without an intimidating pile, an excrescence of centuries of wealth heaped up on a core of medieval brutality. And when they were led into the sprawling walled compound through an entrance called the Norman Gate, and faced a mound of earth topped by the ‘Round Tower’, the interior struck him as gloomy and claustrophobic.
That sensation only got more pronounced as the party, passed off from one flunkey to another, was led through a narrow doorway and deep into the interconnected buildings of the castle wards, at first through grand passageways, but at last finishing up in a remote, murky corner, where a trapdoor led to a staircase down which they descended.
Then they were led by servants with oil lamps through another warren of corridors and rooms, apparently entirely underground. The chambers here were lined by shelves heaped with papers, and with other items only dimly glimpsed as they walked on: hunting trophies and stuffed animals, spears and drums, a kind of feathered headdress. Luis, feeling increasingly enclosed and uncomfortable, was aware that the servants who escorted them, despite their smart appearance, were stationed front and back, and were all big, powerful men with plenty of room for weapons under their loose jackets.