“No, sir, Mr. Stephen considered himself an Englishman— he said to me that he was going off to war because it was his duty to the King. And Mr. Stephen was one that always took duty seriously. Mr. Cormac, now, he was in the war too, but I never heard he went to France. Miss Olivia told me he was doing something secret, and I shouldn’t ask.” She smiled. “I never could picture him as a spy, sir! Sneaking about and telling lies. Mr. Stephen, now, he’d see all that as a game, like hide and seek. He were—more light-hearted. The kind of man who’d shrug it off and not be touched by it. But Mr. Cormac was always one to mind appearances. Not to the manor born, you might say.”

Cormac had spent his war breaking codes. Not as exciting as spying. And not as dangerous. But quite as important as shouldering a rifle.

He left her and went to walk through the wood between the village and the Hall, searching along the muddy path for pansies, then looking in small clearings, before giving it up. This was far too close to the village to risk bringing the body of a small boy and burying him. And Olivia hadn’t said anything about trees in her poem.

When he was called to the moors the second time, it was a man who came for him, and they trudged in silence to the place where a small cache of clothes had been found. The shreds were small and dirty and rotting with the damp of the earth, but a boy’s clothing. Short jacket—you could see how the collar lay, and one side seam. Short trousers—part of the waistband and a pocket, part of one leg. What might have been a shirt and underdrawers, mere threads of white that fell apart at the touch. The good wool of the jacket and trousers was tougher, and had lasted while the linen and the cotton had disintegrated. And someone had wrapped it all quite carefully in heavily oiled cloth, which had protected the fabric for a very long time. He couldn’t be sure of the colors. But there was enough of the cloth left to draw conclusions about the shape and general size of the outer garments, as he gingerly spread them out on the grass. Interestingly enough, there were no shoes ...

“Tregarth found them, sir,” Dawlish was saying. “He’s walked these moors man and boy for sixty years. Noticed the white stone wasn’t natural to the land around here, and was curious, like. He started digging, and what came to light looked odd. He called me and we laid the packet open enough to be sure what was inside, before sending for you.”

“Good man!” Rutledge said over his shoulder to the diffident farmer waiting close by. The grizzled head nodded, satisfaction in the sharp, weather-browned face.