"How long has he been here?"

"Don't know."

I moved to the stable hands still leaning on their rakes and asked them. Like Sebastian, they eyed me in surprise, but answered. Middleton had been employed at Sudbury for six months.

I might have been mistaken, I told myself. I had only glimpsed the man. But I did not think so. Why one of James Denis' men should have taken up a post in Berkshire, at a boys' school, I hadn't the faintest idea. But if I was right, this boded no good.

"You sure it was him, sir?"

Bartholomew held my coat in one hand, his stiff-bristled brush in the other. The blond giant had stopped and stared, wide-eyed, when I'd announced what I'd seen.

"No," I answered. I drank the thick coffee Bartholomew had brought after my supper. The quarters allotted to me consisted of a rather plain but cozy room on the top floor of the Head Master's house. My windows looked over the meadows behind the school and the line of trees that marked the canal. "He did not come out again, and I could not go charging in after him. He looked just as surprised to see me."

"But he must have heard you'd come here," Bartholomew said. "That's why he's kept scarce whenever you came to take a horse, I'd wager."

"Well, if he is Denis' man, why is he here?" I wondered. "Did Denis send him to keep an eye on me?"

"Could be, sir. Or could be he's quit of Mr. Denis. Or could be he doesn't want Mr. Denis to know where he is."

"True." If I was correct about who he was, Denis had once sent the man Middleton to my rooms in Covent Garden to fetch me. Denis generally employed pugilists and former coachmen to serve as rather menacing bodyguards and lackeys. This one had been no less menacing than any of the others. I had refused the summons. Bartholomew's presence had helped, and the man had left in defeat.