Free Raleigh's Page by Alan Armstrong Page A

couldn’t smell anything.
    Mr. Raleigh smiled a tight smile as he nodded. “Watch that no one does that to you again. Your sense will return. The naphtha numbed it.”
    He poured some into a dish and struck a spark. Andrew jumped back as the liquid burst into flame with a thick smoke.
    “Useful for mischief, if mischief is required,” Mr. Raleigh said quietly. “Monsieur Pena and I once escaped a trap with it. As the Frenchmen crept up to slit our throats, we gave them a splash of naphtha and set them on fire.”
    Andrew walked slowly back to the dormitory, imagining Frenchmen with drawn knives in the shadows. At the window, sunlight burned like naphtha.

15
    A V ISIT H OME
    That night in the dormitory, Andrew told William loud enough to awaken Peter, “I’m being sent back tomorrow because I’m homesick.”
    Somehow saying his lines as an actor and not as himself was easy.
    He could tell, watching William’s face, his friend guessed something was up. “Will you return?” William asked.
    “I don’t know.”
    Peter giggled. It was an ugly sound. Andrew lay in bed thinking to choke him.
    The next morning, Mr. Harriot gave him money for his trip and a black band to tie around his right arm above the elbow.
    “Folks will assume you are in mourning. Be grave,” he said with a wink.
    The boy rode hard. He wore the black band and kept to himself where he fed and rested. There were few questions.
    The sea wind was sharp against him as he rode down to the coast from Exeter. By the time he reached Plymouth, it was blowing a gale with a fine stinging rain.
    He stabled his mount and climbed the twisting narrow stone-paved lanes up to St. Andrew’s Church. The few folks out were muffled against the weather.
    He slipped into the church. It was like a huge upside-down ship, dark and silent. It smelled of soap and candles. The gloom was like a mist. He didn’t see Tremayne. Had he got the message? Had someone given him the tincture to read it?
    He could hardly breathe. Every sound made him jump. Then a shape he recognized slipped around a corner in the shadows and signaled with his hand.
    They didn’t speak. They walked apart, like strangers, down to the water’s edge, bent deep into the wind.
    “How did you read my message?” Andrew asked as they crouched under an overhang.
    “A merry peddler calling himself Quinch came to my school singing and selling tonics,” Tremayne said. “Only he was no peddler and what he sold me was no tonic. He was strange-looking and dirty—a small streaked face stuck on top of a ragbag body stuffed to bursting with layers of old sweaters over shirts and jackets. You couldn’t tell what was belly and what was wrapping. He stank of onions; he looked like an onion! He grinned and burbled like a man drunk under his striped pack.
    “I was about to turn him away when he half sang in his funny voice, ‘I have something needful from your young friend’s master.’
    “I took him aside,” Tremayne continued. “The man’s eyes were honest. What made his face look strange were the streaks of soot and red clay he’d smeared on.
    “Once we were out of earshot, he fumbled in his pack for a jar.
    “‘This will help you read something that’s coming,’ the fellow said, grinning and capering all the while as if he were presenting me with a great joke. I thought him mad, but he hinted enough to make me trust him. As he took my coin, he told me the trick of pouring the potion on the page. But what a smell as the sheet dried before the candle! And then the writing vanished!
    “Some potion!” laughed Tremayne. “I hear he called at Stillwell too.
    “So what’s all this about?” he asked.
    “Mr. Raleigh needs us to go to France, pretending we’re wine merchants,” Andrew explained. “Or rather, you are. I’m to be your clerk. At Marseilles we’ll visit a man who deals in wines. He has a map Mr. Raleigh wants. We’ll take it.”
    Tremayne’s mouth sagged open as Andrew spoke. When the