“I don’t know. I’ve never pargetted,” he replied, his English blood still in ascendancy.

Before she could respond to his frivolity, Gerald Woollass appeared.

“There you are, Mr. Madero. I’m pleased to tell you that I’ve decided that your application to be allowed access to some of our early family records should be approved.”

Frek clapped her hands together once, not so much a gesture of spontaneous joy as a formal signal of accord.

Madero said, “I’m honored and grateful. Thank you very much, sir.”

“Yes yes,” said Woollass, flapping his hand as if to dislodge a persistent fly. “A condition is that you sign a note of agreement giving me the right to see, emend or veto any passage in your thesis which refers to my family. I have had such a note made out in anticipation of a successful outcome to your interview. Is this agreeable to you?”

Just in case I do try to sneak in something he doesn’t like about Father Simeon! thought Madero as he said, “Naturally, sir.”

“Good. I presume you’d like to start right away? You will find the note of agreement on the desk in the study. Be so good as to sign it and give it to Frek. Lunch is at one. No documents to be removed. No photography. Presumably you’d like this. Its weight suggests you have come well prepared, but not, I hope, with cameras.”

He handed over the briefcase which Madero had left by the side of his chair.

“No, sir,” said Madero, opening the case. “Just a laptop, plus pen and paper as a failsafe. Oh, and there’s this, which I hope you will accept as a token of my gratitude.”

He produced a bottle of what an expert eye would have recognized instantly as the rarest and most expensive fino in the Madero Bastardo range.

Woollass took it and said, “Ah yes. Sherry. Thank you,” then walked away, swinging the bottle by his side.

“Sorry,” said Frek. “We’re not really a sherry family.”

“De gustibus non est disputandum,” murmured Madero.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said Frek. “This way.”

She set off up the stairs, her hair flowing down her back like a black torrent into which he felt an almost irresistible impulse to plunge his hands.

On the landing she paused and said, “The study’s that way but you might like a quick glance first at our Long Gallery which gets a para to itself in Pevsner.”

“By all means,” said Madero.

In fact the Long Gallery wasn’t all that long but it had some interesting stonework and a fretted ceiling in need of restoration. A line of round arched windows admitted the morning sunlight to illumine the row of family portraits on the opposing wall. He paused before one of a handsome young man, looking very dashing in modern military uniform.

“My grandfather,” said Frek.

“I thought it might be. He has medals.”

“Indeed. One of them is the Military Cross. He was just old enough for the last couple of years of the war, but typically he seems to have made up for lost time. Afterward, I think he wanted to forget it. He says it was his father’s idea to have him painted in uniform. It can be an uncomfortable thing, trying to keep a proud father happy.”

“Indeed it can,” said Madero rather sadly. “But a good man will always try.”

He walked slowly down the gallery, feeling himself watched by all those slatey eyes, living and dead, till he came to the portrait which had caught his attention as soon as he entered, partly because it had pride of place on the cross wall at the end of the room, partly because it was the only one to show two people.

As he had guessed, they were Edwin and Alice Woollass, depicted full length, almost life size, when they were both into middle age. She was a sturdy woman with lively intelligent features, he much taller with a serious ascetic face.

“Interesting,” he said.

“Indeed,” said Frek. “If only because she was the first and the last woman the Woollasses thought it worthwhile having a portrait of.”

“Perhaps you will change their minds,” said Madero with an effort at gallantry.

“I think I may change more than that,” murmured Frek. “Have you seen enough?”

Something in her voice made him look more closely, then he said, “Ah. The priest-hole.”

“You’ve spotted it then?”

“Now I look more closely,” he said, “I see there’s a certain asymmetry about the room. There should be another meter of wall after this end window.”

She stepped forward and ran her hand down behind the portrait. There was a click and the whole picture swung out of the wall to reveal an opening.

“Clever,” he said. “Clearly constructed as an afterthought, hence the asymmetry.”

“There was no need of priest-holes in 1535.”

“Of course not,” he said, stepping through the aperture.

He’d seen far worse hiding places. A man could stand upright in here. There was a faintly musty smell. With the picture back in place it would of course be pitch-black. He stretched out his hands and leaned with his palms against the wall. Then he closed his eyes and stood stock-still for a good half-minute before stepping back out.

“Was that a prayer you were saying?” she asked.

“No. I was just trying to get a sense of what it must have been like.”

“And did you?”

“Oddly, no.”

“Why oddly?”

He hesitated then said, “I’m usually quite sensitive to… that sort of thing.”

“Perhaps terror, hunger, thirst, angry voices, metal-shod feet tramping, mailed fists banging, are necessary for a true appreciation of that sort of thing,” she said.

“True,” he said. “So is it recorded that Father Simeon ever took refuge here?”

“It’s recorded that the house was searched at least twice, including this chamber, and no trace of him was found,” she said. “Why so interested in Father Simeon?”

“I’m not really. But your father seemed a little sensitive on the subject.”

“Not without cause. A priest in a Catholic family is often as much a cause for concern as pride, as perhaps your own family discovered.”

She was sharp.

“But you must be impatient to get a start,” she went on. “Follow me, please.”

She walked away with an effortless almost gliding motion he found so much more effective than any seductive hipwaggling could have been.

The study was on the same floor as the gallery, a broad high room though with only one window. Against the side walls stood a pair of matching bookcases in dark oak. From the window he could see the plume of smoke still rising above the Forge, and further below, across the river, the stubby chimneys of the Stranger House. But Madero only spared the view a passing glance. His main attention was focused on the desk.

Here was God’s plenty. Half a dozen octavo volumes, cased in leather. Three folio ledgers. An abundance of loose sheets of varying sizes in two open box files.

For a moment he felt disturbed by such liberal cooperation, as perhaps a bright mouse might scenting the ripe cheese so generously scattered over the floor of the trap.

But in some things mice and men, bright or not, have no choice.

“Here’s the letter of agreement,” said Frek. “Sorry.”

“No need to be. Your father’s a wise man,” he said, scribbling his signature.

“Have you read it properly?” she asked doubtfully.

“I heard what your father said it contained. To study it would be both redundant and offensive,” he said, handing her the paper.

Their fingers touched. To prolong the contact, he did not let go immediately.

“I’m grateful for your help,” he said.

“How do you know you’ve had it?” she said, pulling the paper from his hand. “If you turn left out of here then left again into a short corridor, you’ll find a bathroom first on the right. I think that’s all, unless you have any questions?”

“No. You have given me all that I want. I shall have no excuse for not getting down to some good productive work, unless I let myself be distracted by the view.”