“You have a plan, sir?” Harley asked respectfully.
Sir Hector looked carefully all about him, but there were no gamekeepers in sight. They were safely alone among the trees.
“This is it,” he said. “Tomorrow night the Cilcoed tollgate, the one kept by Mrs. Dilys Phillips, is going to be destroyed—by a Rebecca and a group of followers of my choosing. They will carry guns and they will be brutal and unruly. Mrs. Phillips will be roughed up and beaten—perhaps worse. She is old and frail, I have heard, and may not survive the shock and the manhandling. All the better. And the whole thing will be witnessed by Mr. Thomas Campbell Foster of The Times. He will be invited by Rebecca.”
Harley frowned. Guns in the hands of a mob sounded dangerous. And the beating and perhaps killing of an innocent and defenseless old woman disturbed his conscience. But he was an angry and bitter young man, and he wanted to see other people suffer as he was suffering, most notably the Earl of Wyvern and Ceris Williams and the blacksmith. And this plan just might do it. Besides, he was not being asked to be personally involved.
“Foster will be convinced if the leader is dressed right,” he said. “But what about the people, sir? Will they believe that their precious Rebecca would go out without the bulk of them and would behave with uncharacteristic violence?”
“They will have no choice,” Sir Hector said. “Rebecca and perhaps Charlotte will be caught the same night. Rebecca will be unmasked and will turn out to be the Earl of Wyvern. And the people will realize that they have been duped, that their Rebecca has been leading them by the nose only to betray them and discredit them before the English reading public and the government, which is about to send a commission here. He will not have a friend left in the world, Harley. Not a single one—for as long as he has left in this world. I shall press for the death penalty. If Mrs. Phillips should happen to die, I will not even have to press hard, will I?”
“How are they to be caught?” Harley asked.
“It will be tricky,” Sir Hector admitted. “Rebecca must receive a message from Foster, and I am not sure that Foster knows how to contact Rebecca. Perhaps it can come through the blacksmith. You are sure of the blacksmith?”
“Absolutely sure,” Harley said.
“Foster will send the message that he wishes to meet the two of them in some secluded spot in the hills,” Sir Hector said, “in order to obtain a little more information for his articles. They will, of course, go in disguise since they will not wish Foster to know their identities. Constables will be waiting to grab them. We will set the meeting for half past ten, a half hour before the gate goes down.”
“It sounds perfect,” Harley said. He laughed. “Almost too perfect.”
“It had better work,” Sir Hector said grimly. “If it does not, Harley, they will know we are on their tail. I want you to watch tomorrow night. Watch Wyvern leave. If for any reason he does not do so, send a messenger in all haste and I will postpone the attack on the gate. But I do not anticipate any problem.”
“No, sir,” Harley said. “It all sounds masterly. If only you can get the message to Rebecca.”
“Leave that to me,” Sir Hector said. “It will be done, Harley. Now, we had better return. We do not want to arouse suspicion by spending longer than usual in company together.”
They turned back in the direction of the house and the stables.
Idris Parry stayed where he was for a full minute, his back flattened against the broad trunk of a tree. But it seemed they really had gone. Gone where, though? To the stables, probably, to fetch Sir Hector Webb’s horse. Or perhaps up to the house. Either way, it was not safe to go dashing up to the front door. Not that he would get anything for his pains by doing that except a clipped ear and a kicked backside.
Idris sped off through the trees in order to make a wide detour around to the back of the house and the kitchen entrance. He would ask for Glenys Owen, he decided. He would say he had an urgent message for her from her dada or one of her brothers.
That part was easy enough. The boy who answered his knock on the door reluctantly agreed to fetch Glenys and meanwhile shut the door again. Glenys appeared, wide-eyed and fearful that all her family had dropped dead in a heap. But she was indignant and discouraging when she knew Idris’s true errand. How could she take him to the earl? she asked him rhetorically. She never went out of the kitchen herself and never set eyes on him.
But she did—much against her better judgment, she explained—point out to Idris the window of the library, where she had heard the earl spent much of his time. At least, she thought it was the library. Actually, she admitted, she was almost as ignorant of the layout of the house as Idris himself.
Idris peeped through the window and was relieved to see the Earl of Wyvern seated behind a large desk, his chin resting on his steepled fingers, apparently staring into space. There was no one else in the room as far as Idris could see. He tapped on the window and made urgent beckoning signals when the earl looked up, startled.
“Do step inside, Idris, won’t you?” his lordship asked, all formal politeness after he had slid open the sash window and Idris was stepping over the sill. He sounded faintly amused, Idris thought.
“Rebecca is in trouble for sure tomorrow night,” Idris said, gazing about him in awe. Had all the books in the world been gathered in this one room? The carpet under his feet was softer than his bed, he would swear. “And so are you. Sir.”
“You like what you see?” the earl asked, his voice definitely amused now. He had switched to speaking Welsh, Idris noticed. “If my sources are correct, Rebecca is not going to be anywhere around tomorrow night, lad. Perhaps never again. And as for me, I can look after myself. Is your dada enjoying his new job?”
“They know who Rebecca is,” Idris said, gawking at the inkstand and letter opener on the desk and wondering if they were really silver or just polished tin. “And they are going to trap him and make him look bad and catch him tomorrow night. They know where he hides his stuff too.” He looked at the earl and knew that he finally had the man’s full attention. Humor was all right in its place, Idris thought, but people ought not to laugh merely because one was nine years old and not a grown man.
“They?” his lordship asked, lifting his eyebrows in a gesture that made him look wonderfully haughty—Idris had practiced imitating the expression but could succeed only in looking surprised.
“Sir Hector Webb,” Idris said, “and Mr. Harley.”
“Indeed?” The earl clasped his hands behind his back, another gesture that Idris had tried to imitate until his mother had asked what he was hiding and his father had threatened to come and look if he did not answer smartly. “Suppose you tell me everything you came here to tell me, Idris. If you feel it right to give the owner of Tegfan information about the enemy, Rebecca, that is.”
Idris giggled. But he was feeling too full of importance to give in to childish hilarity. He told his lordship everything he had heard and wished as he spoke that his hair would curl like the earl’s and that his eyes were blue.
The earl was looking at him intently by the time he finished speaking. “I believe, Idris,” he said at last, “I am going to have to give you employment at Tegfan. You might as well have a legitimate reason for being here since you are always here anyway.”