But then he looked away again and everything was normal. ‘You have done well with Jack. It does appear that he accepts you in your role, and does believe you cannot speak.’
‘Yes, well, it wasn’t all that difficult. Your brother talks so much himself I doubt I could have got a word in edgeways if I’d wanted to.’
I had never heard him laugh. I liked the sound of it. He asked, ‘When was it he arrived?’
‘This morning. Through that window, actually. I’d locked the doors.’
‘And if you should be here and on your own again, I trust you’ll do the same, and keep them bolted fast till one of us returns. Nor should you hesitate to use the hole to hide from an intruder.’
‘What hole?’
‘The priest’s hole.’ With a glance at my uncomprehending face, he asked, ‘Is it not used in your own time?’
I shook my head. ‘We don’t have any need to hide our priests.’
‘No more do we. But such a hiding place does still have uses. Come.’ He took a candle from the table and led me from the kitchen, through the hall and halfway up the staircase to the broad half-landing with its panelled walls. ‘The tale is that the building of Trelowarth happened not long since King Henry had defied the Pope and set aside his queen to marry Anne Boleyn. The times then were as troubled as our own, and men who kept to the old faith were forced to say their prayers in secret, and to hide their priests whenever the King’s agents came to call.’ His fingers found the corners of a panel with a sureness born of practice and he gave a single push, and with a quiet click the spring gave way. A length of panel nearly my own height, hinged like a door, swung neatly outward.
In the space behind, a man could stand – or sit, if he grew tired – but he couldn’t do much more than that. It would be dark and close, but safe.
‘You pull it shut with this, when you are in,’ said Daniel, showing me the metal ring attached to the inside, ‘and none will find you.’
‘Have you ever had to use it?’
‘On occasion.’
It would be an uncomfortable place for a man of his height, and I said so, but he only shrugged.
‘I had rather stoop here for an hour than be stretched at the end of a rope.’
It was not the first time he’d implied he earned his living in a way that wasn’t legal, and I called him on it. ‘Is the law so merciless with free-traders?’
He took the question in his stride. ‘The law, in my experience, is more strict in its word than in its practice. And the constable does line his pockets well by his arrangements with the free-traders who choose to make their harbour in Polgelly, and does please himself to look the other way while we unload our cargoes. No,’ he said, ‘’tis not my free-trading that so concerns the constable. He would see me hang for something far more heinous in his view.’
‘For treason.’
Daniel swung the panel shut with a decided click, and turned. ‘Is that what he did tell you?’ He seemed curious, not angry, but I didn’t have the courage to repeat the words the constable had said to me, however much they resonated in my mind.
I didn’t need to. Daniel said, ‘And did he tell you that you would be damned yourself for comforting a traitor to the Crown?’ He smiled slightly without waiting for an answer, and a hardness touched his eyes although I knew it wasn’t meant for me. ‘I can but guess what words he used when he did phrase that speech. I am no traitor, Eva.’ With a level gaze and even voice he faced me. ‘I am loyal to the rightful King of England, as my father was before me, and will be so for as long as I do live.’
I knew that he was saying he was loyal to James Stuart, still across the sea in exile, and I could have told him that there was no future in that loyalty because the Stuarts never would regain their crown, and all their dreams of restoration would be killed on battlefields and paid for with the blood of countless Jacobites. But if I told him anything, I’d interfere with what was meant to happen, maybe change what was to come, and that might have a far more devastating consequence.
He must have seen the conflict of emotions on my face, but he misunderstood their cause. ‘I promise you,’ he said, ‘I will let no one do you harm.’
I couldn’t hold his gaze. I looked away.
I hadn’t realised he was close enough to touch me, but he did. He reached a hand to lightly take my chin and turn my face back round so that our eyes met, and he said again, more quietly, ‘I promise.’
I couldn’t speak.
Which probably was just as well, because at that same moment I heard Fergal coming back with Jack, and making noise enough to let us know it.
Daniel smiled, and let his hand drop. ‘Damn the man,’ he said, without an ounce of violence. ‘Even now he is developing the instincts of a brother.’
He was right. For it was Fergal, in the end, who saw me safely up the stairs that night and checked in all the corners of my room before he left me, and stood waiting in the corridor until I’d put the key into the padlock he had given me, and turned it to secure the latch.
And next morning it was Fergal and not Daniel who instructed me on how to do my hair.
He brought a looking glass and pins into my bedroom, sat me down beside the window, and with hands that were surprisingly adept and gentle, showed me how to wind the strands in curls and pin them into place.
I asked him, ‘Is there anything you can’t do, Fergal?’