VIII Read Online Free

army. And they won’t manage that. So. You don’t need to worry about him.”
    Compton makes for the door now, but an idea occurs to him and he turns back, with a new look of helpfulness on his face. “Would you like to put a stake on it, sir? Not, obviously, on the outcome. God knows—” he crosses himself, “we are certain of that. Just on the number of days we’ll stay here?”
    My belt and purse are lying on the table beside me. I open the purse and count the contents carefully. “Sixpence says five days or more?”
    Compton sucks in his lips.
    “I don’t have much with me!” I tilt the purse towards him as proof.
    “Beggars can’t be choosers. Five days exactly, though.”He catches the coin I throw to him, tosses it into the air, bounces it off his elbow and, catching it again, secretes it somewhere inside his doublet.
    As he closes the door behind him I turn to the window again, and rub off the dragon with my sleeve. Down in the courtyard, a covered cart is coming in through the Inner Ward gate, and servants are running from the hall doors opposite, ready to unload it.
    I watch them, and think of Compton’s confidence. I pick through his words carefully, like counting out the coins. I often do this with things grown-ups say.
    He won’t dare land here, sir – not unless the rebels defeat your father’s army. And they won’t manage that. So. You don’t need to worry about him .
    Compton’s certainty is like a blanket, comforting and warm, but a tiny part of me still wonders: how does he know? I’ve heard some of the servants say that God is angry because people are bad, and so He is sending more wars to punish everyone and that this man – the Pretender – will start up the civil wars again, the ones that raged for years and years before I was born and that my father put a stop to.
    But Mistress Denton, who is in charge of our household at Eltham, slaps anyone she hears talking like that, so maybe it’s not true. Or maybe it is true, but it’s wicked to talk about it. Mistress Denton’s always on a sharp lookout for wickedness.
    There’s a tap on the door.
    “Excuse me, sir. May we put this in here?”
    Two servants shuffle in, carrying another trunk between them.
    I say, “Did you see Compton on the way up?”
    “No, sir. Shall I fetch him, sir?”
    I shake my head.
    If he’s not on his way up yet I can look for Raggy, my oldscrap of cradle-blanket. I hope it’s been packed. I’m always afraid Mistress Denton will throw it away. She threatens to all the time; she says I’m too old to be attached to something so babyish. But I need Raggy, especially at a time like this.
    I’d like to find my book of stories about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, too. I’ve just got up to a really exciting passage about Sir Galahad and I want to know what happens next.
    So, when the servants have shut the door behind them, I climb down from the window seat and grab the bunch of keys Compton’s left on a shelf by the door. One by one, I try the keys in the lock of the trunk they’ve just brought in. The fourth fits. Turning it, I lift the lid.
    The trunk is full to the brim. First layer: large bags of dried rose petals to perfume clothes; I discard them on the floor. Next: my red and black cloak and two doublets. Then I fling out three pairs of hose. Raggy, to my joy, is lying just beneath, on top of something hard that’s covered in black velvet. It’s not a book box, this hard thing; it’s large, curved unevenly and – running along the centre – there is something ridged like a spine.
    I prod it. For a moment, staring stupidly, I can’t think. There is something horrible about how solid this thing is – I sense that, even before I register the curl of straw-coloured hair at the collar, even before I see that it is a person: a boy, bigger than me, folded over, face down, inside the trunk, with his forehead to his knees. There is no movement in his back, no breathing, and a