Fallen Angels

The man was called Bertrand Marchenoir. There had been a time when he was a priest, a fierce preacher made famous by the vitriol of his sermons, but the revolution had let him abandon the service of God for the service of the people. He was now a leader of the revolution; a man to fear or love, but never ignore.

Marchenoir bullied his followers; he preached, he shouted, he thumped tables into the night, he led, he harangued, he wept false tears to rouse the mob, his gestures were as expansive as his oratory. His voice, starting low and rising to a massive crescendo, had stirred the people from their slums out into the great streets of Paris. He had been at the Bastille, he had helped fetch the King from Versailles, and now his massive, terrifying force whipped the laggards in the National Assembly. ‘Forward! Forward!’ was his cry, and this week in Paris, fearing that the revolution would go backwards, Bertrand Marchenoir had led the slaughter in the prisons.

For those who wanted vengeance on their betters, Marchenoir was an idol. For those who wanted moderation, he was a scourge. No one was allowed to forget that he was peasant born; no gutter, he said, was lower than the one in which he had been spawned, and no palace, he shouted, was so high that it could not be pulled down. Forward, ever forward, and this week a thousand and more had died that Marchenoir’s revolution could go forward.

This was the man who came to the cell, who looked almost disinterestedly at the mess on the floor, then back to the Gypsy. ‘So you’re Gitan?’

‘I am Gitan.’

‘You know me?’

‘I know of you, citizen.’

Marchenoir smiled and waved his cigar at the scraps of the body. ‘You’re doing woman’s work, Gitan.’

‘A man is lucky to have a job these days, citizen.’

The heavy, jowled face stared at the Gypsy whose words had verged on criticism of the revolution. Then Marchenoir twitched his unshaven cheeks into a smile, into a laugh, and he kicked at the sack. ‘Why are you doing it, Gitan?’

‘The English lord wants to bury her.’

‘So let him do his own dirty work. Are you a slave?’

‘I am a horse-master.’

‘And she’s a corpse.’ Marchenoir stepped over the sack and peered at the face on the window ledge. ‘She took a long time dying.’

‘So Brissot said.’

‘Brissot has a fat mouth. One day I’ll sit on it and fill it up.’ Marchenoir spoke without anger. ‘I let them have her first. They queued from her to the second floor!’ He leaned against the wall, the candle throwing the shadows upwards on his big, red face. ‘I should have charged two livres a go, eh?’

‘Not a very revolutionary thought, citizen.’

Marchenoir laughed. He was a leader of ‘the left’, so called because they sat on the left side of the Assembly. They were revolutionaries who sought to abolish the crown, destroy the old privileges, and declare France a people’s republic. The events of the last two months were bringing that dream to fruition. Now Marchenoir blew a plume of smoke over the cell. ‘I was thinking that we ought to have a people’s brothel with girls like this. Every whore an aristo, yes? It would pay for the army.’ He looked at the girl’s head. ‘Do you think she deserved to die, horse-master?’

‘We all die,’ Gitan said. He was astonished at the brooding sense of power that was in this room. He had heard Marchenoir speak many times, he had seen the powerful arms beckoning at the crowd, listened to the voice arouse their anger and their hopes, yet still he was astonished at the sheer presence of the man.

Marchenoir chuckled at the non-committal answer. ‘She had to die, Gitan, but why? That, my friend, is my secret.’ He stabbed with his cigar at the Gypsy. ‘Nothing can be done without blood, nothing! Even the church taught that! If we fear blood we fear life! Isn’t that right, sweet child?’ He had asked the question of the severed head. He chuckled, and pushed the stub of his cigar into the dead lips. He turned back to the Gypsy. ‘I wanted to talk with you.’

‘I’m here.’ Even with such a rising, powerful man as Marchenoir, the Gypsy seemed laconically independent, yet there was a hint of respect, of deference in his bearing. Marchenoir, after all, was in the new government.

Marchenoir sat against the far wall. He was a man of extraordinary slovenliness, his clothes filthy, torn, patched and held by loops of fraying string where the buttons had come free. Gitan, whose black clothes were spotless, saw the streaks of food and spittle on the politician’s coat and reflected that such an appearance was a decided advantage for the ambitious in these days. It was certainly part of Marchenoir’s appeal. The people saw him as rough, ready, lovable, and theirs. He spoke for them, and he killed for them.

Marchenoir had taken another cigar from his waistcoat pocket and he leaned forward to light it from the candle. ‘What else are you besides a horse-master?’

Gitan shrugged. ‘Just that.’

Marchenoir stared at him. When his face was in repose it had a brooding aspect, as if his mind stirred above a pot of horrors. Slowly, he smiled. ‘I hear from Citizen Belleau that you are more.’ He ignored Gitan’s shrug. ‘You are a spy, Gitan, a spy.’

‘If Citizen Belleau says so.’

Marchenoir laughed. ‘Citizen Belleau does say so. You have, he says, given us much valuable information from the English Embassy.’

Gitan said nothing. What Marchenoir said was true. For three years, while employed by Lord Werlatton, the Gypsy had passed news to whatever government ruled in Paris. Marchenoir took a scrap of tobacco leaf from his tongue. ‘Do you deny it?’

‘No.’

‘So what happens to you, horse-master and spy, when the Embassy closes down?’

Gitan shrugged. The British Embassy was one of the last in Paris. After the slaughter of this week it would undoubtedly close. ‘There’s always a job for a good horse-master.’

‘Like a whore or lawyer, eh?’ Marchenoir’s pouchy, bloodshot eyes watched the Gypsy. ‘Does your little English lord want you to stay with him?’

Gitan paused, then nodded. ‘Yes.’

Marchenoir smiled. ‘Tell me, horse-master, do you know who your little lordling’s father is?’

‘He’s an earl.’

‘An earl.’ Marchenoir said the word with distaste. His bitter hatred for the aristocracy was at the root of his fame. ‘But not just any earl, horse-master. Before his accident he was Britain’s spymaster. Did you know that?’

‘No.’

‘The British spymaster.’ Marchenoir said it as though he spoke of a terrible ogre to a small child. He laughed and spat another shred of leaf towards the blood. ‘Lord of the English spies! The Lazenders are so damned deep into spying that they’ve got eyes in their backsides. Your little lordling’s a spy, isn’t he?’

The Gypsy did not reply, though he knew the accusation was true. Lord Werlatton’s job in the Paris Embassy was to entertain the politicians and bureaucrats of Paris. He would lavish champagne and luxury upon them, and leave the rest to their indiscretions.

Marchenoir pointed the cigar at Gitan. ‘So will you go to England with your lord, Gypsy?’

‘I don’t know.’

Marchenoir stared at him, as if considering the truth of the answer. Slowly, he smiled. ‘I want you to go with him.’ The Gypsy said nothing. Marchenoir spoke softly. ‘I want you to go, Gitan, because soon we will be at war with England, and because the English will ask you to become a spy.’

The Gypsy shrugged. ‘Why would they ask me?’

‘God made the gypsies fools?’ Marchenoir’s smile took the sting from the words. ‘They will have a French-speaking man whom they know has friends in Paris. Of course they’ll recruit you! They will think you work for them, but really you will work for me.’ He said the last words slowly and forcefully.

‘For you?’

‘I need a messenger, horse-master, who can travel between here and London. A messenger who can travel in utter safety.’ Marchenoir’s voice was low and urgent. ‘So let them recruit you. In England they will protect you, and in France we will protect you. What could be more perfect? Our enemy will be your friend.’

The Gypsy did not speak or move. His odd, light blue eyes stared at the other man, his long black hair clung to shadow his thin face.

Marchenoir pointed to the candle with his cigar. His voice was still low. ‘It is not I who ask, Gitan, nor France. It is that.’

The Gypsy looked at the flame. He knew the secret message that was being given to him. The candle gave light, and light was reason, and reason was the gospel of the Illuminati. ‘For reason?’

Marchenoir smiled. His voice was low. ‘For reason, which is above the law.’

The Gypsy looked from the candle to the powerful man. For the first time the Gypsy smiled easily, his fear of Marchenoir gone. Now he knew why such an important man had sought him out. Even Gitan’s voice seemed to change. He no longer was wary, he spoke now as if to an equal because he had discovered that this most dangerous, forceful man was, like himself, a member of the secret Illuminati. ‘I sometimes feared that the brethren slept.’

‘No, my friend. So? Will you be our messenger?’

Gitan still smiled. He gestured at the candle. ‘Of course.’

Marchenoir grunted approval and struggled to his feet. ‘There will be rewards, Gitan.’ He waved his cigar at the body. ‘We’re going to strip these bastards of everything, everything!’ He stared at what was left on the floor. ‘She was going to marry your English lord, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your English lord.’ Marchenoir’s voice was suddenly bitter. ‘His mother was a d’Auxigny. I grew up in Auxigny. We had to kneel in the mud if one of the family went past. Even if the coach was a half mile away we had to kneel. Even if we were thigh deep in muck we had to kneel. All between the river and the mountain belonged to Auxigny, and that included us.’ He laughed. ‘Do you know who the present owner of Auxigny is?’

Gitan smiled at the big man. ‘You, citizen!’

‘Me!’ Marchenoir pointed at his breast with his cigar. ‘Perhaps I’ll turn it into a brothel of aristo bitches.’ He nudged the sack with his dirty boot. ‘That’s one at least I won’t have to kneel to again.’ He laughed as he walked to the cell door. ‘Good hunting, my friend. See me before you leave Paris!’ He was in the corridor now, his voice booming behind him as he walked away. ‘Come and drink to our success, Gitan!’ He laughed again, then sang a line of the new song that was sweeping through Paris. ‘The day of glory has arrived!’ The smell of his cigar lingered in the stink of blood, urine and flesh. He shouted once more, his voice fading. ‘Forward! Forward!’

The Gypsy did not move for a long time after the politician had gone. He stared at the candle. Then, at last, he stepped to the window, took the damp cigar stub from the dead girl’s lips, and threw it into the darkness.

He finished his work, tying the neck of the sack over the long, black hair of a girl who had been beautiful before this day, then he carried his soggy burden down to where carts were being loaded with the white, naked bodies of the enemies of the state.

His horse, untethered still, whinnied and came towards him. The Gypsy mounted, the sack heavy in his hand, and rode into a night that was filled with the smell of death, into a city exhausted by massacre. Yet he knew there would be more blood, far more; these deaths were just a beginning, enough to give the new men who had risen to power the taste of slaughter.

He thought of Marchenoir, of the candle’s secret message, and smiled in pleasure. He was the Gypsy, the black dressed horseman who would ride through the horrors on the secret, silent path of the traitor, just as he now rode through a silent, dark, frightened city with his burden of death. He rode unafraid through a city of fear; he was the Gypsy.

2

Rain threatened Lazen. Since dawn the clouds had been low over the hills that edged the Lazen valley, and the wind that came from the west was cold as though it brought the chill of the long grey waves from beyond Cornwall.

The Lady Campion Lazender, dressed in a plain blue linen dress covered with a blue cloak, was riding, in a most unladylike manner, over a newly ploughed field. She rode astride, careless that her ankles showed.

At the edge of the field she turned the horse back. The field was muddy, heavy with the rain that had fallen in the night. She kicked her heels to force the mare into a trot.

‘She’s a rare looking girl, Mr Burroughs,’ said a tall, bald man who stood at the field’s edge.

‘That she is.’ Simon Burroughs was the Castle’s head coachman, a rank denoted by the six capes of his greatcoat and by the curled whip he carried in his gloved right hand.

‘Mare goes well for her!’ The bald man was hopeful that her Ladyship would buy the mare from him.

‘Maybe.’ Burroughs would not commit himself.

Campion turned the horse again, and forced it into a canter. She leaned forward, trying to hear if the breath was whistling in the mare’s pipes. ‘Come on, girl! Come on!’ She slapped its neck.

The owner of the horse, Harry Trapp, was a farmer who had ridden this day from the Piddle Valley. He knew that Lazen Castle would always buy a decent horse.

Campion turned the horse again and this time she galloped the mare up the slope of the field, across the grain of the plough, and she kicked her heels back to see what speed the animal would show in this deep, wet ground. Mud flecked the skirts of her dress and cloak. She turned at the field’s head and cantered toward the two men. Her cheeks were glowing, her face alive with pleasure.

She swung herself from the saddle, slapped at some of the mud on her cloak, and went to the horse’s head. ‘She summered in a field, Mr Trapp?’

‘Yes, my Lady.’

That, she thought, explained the horse’s poor condition. She was newly shod, but the shoes had been put on over feet battered by a summer on dry land. ‘Has she had any oats?’

‘No, my Lady. But she filled up nicely last winter.’

Campion ran her hand down the horse’s neck, down the forelegs to the chipped knee. The farmer shrugged. ‘That don’t stop her, my Lady.’

‘Why are you selling?’

The farmer shrugged. ‘Ain’t got no call for her, my Lady. Too good to pull a bloody cart.’

‘Don’t you swear to her Ladyship,’ Simon Burroughs said.

‘Sorry, my Lady,’ the farmer said.

Campion hid her smile. All the men in the Castle, Simon Burroughs included, swore freely in front of her, but were outraged if any outsider took the same liberty.

The mare was broad and firm at the root of her neck, and was hardly blowing because of the exercise. She would, Campion thought, make a good hunter, but would never breed the foal that Campion wanted which would be as fast as any in England. She opened the horse’s mouth. ‘Six years old?’

‘Yes, my Lady.’

‘Seven,’ said Simon Burroughs. ‘You tried to sell her last year to Sir John. You said she was six then.’

‘Seven,’ said Mr Trapp.

‘What do you call her?’

‘Emma.’ He seemed ashamed of the name.

‘It’s a nice name.’ Campion was looking at the mare’s eyes. There was a tiny fleck in the left eye, but not in the line of vision. ‘What are you asking?’

The farmer hesitated. He was not used to bargaining with girls, let alone the beautiful daughters of the aristocracy, and in truth what he was asking was inflated outrageously simply because he had come to Lazen which was famous for its fortune. He decided to brazen it out. ‘Squire at Puddletown offered me seventy pounds for her.’

‘You should have taken it,’ Campion said. ‘Feed her two pounds of oats a day for a week and I’m sure he’ll offer it again.’ She smiled at the man and held him the reins. ‘Thank you for coming, Mr Trapp.’

‘My Lady!’ The farmer was blushing. ‘I thought she’d be happier here.’

Campion gave him her most beautiful smile, pleased by the compliment. She knew what the horse was worth, and so did the farmer, but it would be unthinkable to buy the mare without going through the necessary bargaining. She pushed a muddy hand at her hair. ‘You can’t expect me to pay top price for a horse that’s been out at grass this long. It’s going to take me a month just to put some muscle on her!’

‘You rode her!’ Mr Trapp pointed out reasonably. ‘Wasn’t pumping one bit when you brought her off the plough! She’ll be fit for anything in a month!’

She ran a hand over the mare’s chipped knee. ‘Did you splint this?’

But the farmer was not listening. He was staring instead at a vision that approached along the path which came from the Castle. The farmer’s jaw dropped. No one would believe him in the taproom tonight.

A middle-aged man stepped precariously between the puddles. He wore breeches of dark blue silk, above tasselled boots of white leather that had been polished to glass brightness. His tail coat was of grey velvet, and his shirt and stock of white silk. He wore no hat or wig, instead his silver hair had been drawn back and tied with a black velvet bow. His fingers were lavishly beringed. In his right hand was a tall ebony cane, topped with gold and decorated with blue ribbons. On his thin, mischievous face there was powder and, on his left cheek, a black beauty patch. He smiled beatifically at the farmer. ‘May blessings rain upon your head, dear man.’

The farmer shook his head. ‘Sir?’

‘May the light of his countenance shine upon you, and give you peace.’ He spoke with a distinct French accent. ‘Is that a horse?’

Campion laughed. ‘Hello, uncle.’

He grimaced. ‘Good God! Is that you, dear Campion? I thought it was a dairy maid. Mr Burroughs.’ He gave the slightest bow. ‘I bid you good day.’

‘Sir,’ the head coachman said.

Campion patted the mare’s neck.’ We’re buying a horse, uncle.’

‘I can’t think why. You have so many, and all they do is clutter up the stables. You should buy a unicorn, dear Campion, a white unicorn with pearls upon its horn. I might learn to ride such a beast.’ He smiled wondrously at the farmer. ‘Can you see me in a unicorn’s saddle, sir? I think reins of gold would suit me, don’t you?’ He put fingertips to his mouth. ‘You must forgive me, dear sir, for you have not the advantage of my name.’ He bowed to the farmer. ‘Achilles d’Auxigny, my most humble duty to you.’

‘Eh?’ said the farmer.

‘This is Harry Trapp, uncle, and you’re not to embarrass him.’ Campion looked at the coachman. ‘I want her, Simon, but I won’t pay more than we paid for Pimpernel.’

Burroughs grinned. ‘Yes, my Lady.’

‘You’ll forgive me, Mr Trapp?’ She smiled at him. ‘And thank you for bringing Emma here.’

‘You’re welcome, my Lady.’ The farmer was blushing again because the Lady Campion was offering him her hand. He wiped his right hand on his smock and took hers. ‘Thank you, my Lady.’

‘And make sure you get something to eat before you ride home.’

‘I will.’ Harry Trapp smiled at her. He knew a real aristocrat when he met one, not some frippery floppery like the weird Frenchman.

Campion took her uncle’s arm and led him back towards the Castle. ‘You shouldn’t be cruel to people.’ She spoke, as she always did in private with him, in her perfect French.

‘I do enjoy teasing your yokels. They are so very teasable.’ He smiled at her. ‘You do look dreadful. Do you have to dress like a peasant? And can’t you leave horses to grooms?’

‘I like horses.’

‘It is time you were married,’ Uncle Achilles said irritably. ‘A good husband would keep you out of the stables.’

She laughed at him. She liked her Uncle Achilles, her mother’s younger brother. His elder brother had become the Duc d’Auxigny, and had inherited with the Dukedom the Marquisates of a score of French villages and become Count of two score more, while Achilles, the younger brother, had inherited nothing except a minor title he refused to use, a noble name, and a clever head. Against his will he had been trained for the priesthood. His noble birth had insured a swift rise to a rich bishopric, a rise that his scandalous, hedonistic behaviour had not impeded in the least.

The revolution in France had let him slide, like Bertrand Marchenoir, out of the priesthood. He refused to take the Constitutional Oath, resigned his See, and when the burning of the great houses began, and when the stories of hacked, raped and slaughtered aristocrats spread through France, he had fled with his widowed mother to the Earl of Lazen’s London house. The Duchess still lived on Lazen’s charity, a charity she constantly criticised. Uncle Achilles, more independent, earned a living from the British government. He did not care to talk much about his work, but Campion knew from her father that Achilles d’Auxigny helped ferret out the secret agents who were smuggled into Britain as so-called refugees from the revolution.

They went through the kissing gate that led to the Castle’s gardens. Campion, holding her uncle’s arm, smiled up at him. ‘I can’t really imagine you as a bishop.’

He pretended indignation. ‘I was a most loved bishop! I used to preach a very good sermon in which I would terrify a parish into making their confessions. I would then listen in the confessional and make a note of which ladies had committed adultery. Then, if they were very pretty, I would visit them and compound the offence, though with instant forgiveness, of course.’ He laughed at her expression.

Turning Achilles d’Auxigny into a priest had been his father’s ambition. Achilles’ father had been known in France as the Mad Duke. He had believed himself to be God and, for his own worship, he had built a shrine at his Chateau of Auxigny in which, by careful mechanical contrivances, he would perform miracles. Undoubtedly the Mad Duke had hoped that his youngest son would preach the family gospel. Instead, as Achilles was fond of saying, his father had thought of himself as God and taught his children thereby that there was none. Now he looked at his niece. ‘I always told your father not to marry into our family. We’re all quite mad.’

‘You’re not.’

He shrugged as if he did not care to argue the point. ‘I just made my farewells to your father. Everyone says you did a remarkably fine thing with his leg.’

‘I just sewed it up, uncle.’

‘Just sewed it up, indeed! I couldn’t have done it. I would have fainted.’

She laughed. She made him walk with her towards the ornamental lake. He complained that it would rain, that he had neither hat, umbrella, cloak or gloves, but consented to accompany her.

‘I do hope Lucille can take to your English ways,’ he said dubiously. ‘Horses and walking. It’s most uncivilized.’

‘She’ll be too busy having babies,’ Campion said. Her brother would be coming with his bride within the week. ‘Lots of babies.’

‘How utterly dreadful. I do hate babies.’

She laughed, refusing to believe him. Achilles d’Auxigny watched her as they walked. She was, he thought, the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. His sister had been beautiful, but in marrying the fifth Earl of Lazen, his sister had created this extraordinary girl, hair as gold as pale wheat, eyes the colour of the Virgin’s dress, a face of strong lines, softened by the mouth and by an indefinable air of goodness that she carried quite unconsciously. She had, her uncle thought, the clearest skin he had ever seen, eyes that shone with happiness; she was a girl of delicate, wonderful beauty. He squeezed her arm. ‘When are you going to marry, Campion?’

She smiled at the question. ‘You don’t give up, uncle, do you?’

‘There are a hundred young men who would lay their souls at your feet! A thousand!’

‘Nonsense.’ She looked away from him. ‘That coppice needs trimming. I told Wirrell last week.’

‘And don’t change the subject,’ Achilles said. ‘You should marry someone, my dear Campion. It is time you were worshipped. That is what women are for! To be worshipped, to be stroked, to be adored.’

‘To be loved?’

‘You talk of illusions.’

‘To be decorative, then?’ she asked him teasingly.

‘Of course,’ he replied seriously.

They had reached the strip of grass between the Castle’s lake and the great, wrought-iron fence that fronted the Shaftesbury road. Achilles stopped and looked over the water. ‘Magnificent.’

They were looking at the celebrated view of Lazen, the one that had been drawn and painted so often that Campion claimed the artists’ easels had permanently marked the lawn at this spot.

From this lake bank Lazen Castle spread across their view in all its magnificence. The Castle had taken two centuries to build, yet it was marvellously coherent. It was really three houses. To the right was the Old House with its Long Gallery and its great windows that reflected the day’s grey light. The Old House was joined by a bridge of rooms to the Great House, and the bridge also formed the portico beneath which carriages drew up to deliver guests to the Castle.

The Great House was the tallest building, topped by the huge banner of Lazen, and fronted by the fluted columns that reared so arrogantly from the great spread of gravel. It was there, in the Great House, that Campion’s father had lain for fifteen years, ever since his best-loved hunter had fallen on him, rolled on him, and bequeathed him paralysis and pain.

To the left was the lowest part of the building, the Garden House that was joined to the Great House by a curving, pillared arcade. It had been built for Campion’s mother, a gift from her husband, but now it was used as a guest wing. It was in the Garden House that Uncle Achilles had been staying on this visit that ended today. Campion stared at Lazen Castle, seeing it reflected in the wide lake. It was home to more than two hundred people; grooms, maids, cooks, footmen, postilions, cellarmen, seamstresses, servants by the score, and all fed and paid by Lazen, their babies born in the town and raised in the Castle’s shadow, their beer brewed in the Castle’s brewhouse, their linen pounded in the Castle’s fullery, their corn ground in the Castle’s mill.

Her uncle stared at her. ‘Do you ever get tired of it?’

‘Never!’ She smiled wistfully, took his elbow again, and began walking. ‘Do you ever wish that nothing should change?’ She looked up at him. ‘That everything would just stop?’ She waved at the Castle. ‘Perhaps next summer? On a day of perfection? If we could just leave it like that for ever?’ She laughed at her own fancy.

He stopped walking, took her face in his long, thin hands on which, perversely, he still wore his bishop’s ring, and kissed her solemnly on the forehead. ‘Dear Campion, may I say something offensive?’

‘Uncle?’

‘This is serious advice.’

‘Oh dear.’ She smiled.

‘It is time you grew up.’ His face, thin and intelligent, was extraordinarily attractive. He was the cleverest man Campion knew, the most interesting, the most unexpected. The lines of age seemed delicately etched beneath the powder on his face. He smiled. ‘I’ve offended you.’

‘No.’

‘I should have offended you, then.’ He took her elbow and walked on with her. ‘Lazen is not yours, my dear. It will go to Toby and Lucille. You will lose Lazen just as I lost Auxigny. You have your own life to make and the sooner you make it, the better. You should not be here adding up columns of figures and worrying about the harvest and paying the wages; you should be in London. You should be dancing.’

‘That doesn’t sound like growing up.’

He walked in silence for a few paces. ‘Experience is growing up, Campion. What’s your family motto?’

‘Dare all.’

‘And you dare nothing! You stay here like a nun in a convent. Of course you’re happy here. You live in the greatest house in western England, you live off the greatest fortune in the realm. You want for nothing, you only have to lift a finger and the servants trample each other to provide for you. I know!’ He raised his gold topped cane to ward off her reply. ‘I know! You work hard. Yet you chose to do that, just as you could have chosen to do nothing. But you exercise your choice in safety. You are like a ship that must leave harbour, a beautiful ship, well built, splendidly rigged, and you dare not leave the quay.’ He stopped and smiled at her. ‘Yet one day, my child, there will be no more harbour, no more quay, no more safety.’

She stared at him, sensing the seriousness in him, then smiled. ‘Lazen will go?’

‘Of course not. It’s eternal.’

She smiled. ‘Toby will be here.’

‘Ah.’ He mocked her with faked comprehension. ‘So the nun will grow old in her brother’s household? When you are really old your great-grandnephews and nieces will be brought to look at you; “See the old lady! See how she dribbles!”’

She laughed. ‘It isn’t true.’

‘Then marry.’

She said nothing for a few paces. ‘Marriage will come, uncle.’

He tutted irritably. ‘You make it sound like a disease!’

‘I don’t want it to be an escape.’

‘How clever you are, niece.’ He smiled at her as they climbed the gentle bank towards the driveway. ‘My beautiful, clever niece with a clockwork heart.’

‘Nonsense!’

‘Then I expect to find you drowning in love’s illusion when I return. I demand it! I expect you to be sighing and writing excessively awful poems about your love’s eyes.’

She laughed and they turned into the driveway, walking directly towards the great house. The huge stable block was visible now to the right of the Castle, its entrance busy as the outriders’ horses were prepared for her uncle’s departure.

Hooves sounded on the gravel behind and Campion turned to see who approached.

At first she thought it was one of the grooms returning from exercising a saddle horse, but then she realized that not one of Lazen’s grooms rode like this man.

This was a horseman. She had grown up in a house that prized horsemanship, that knew a thing or two about men and horses, but never had she seen a horseman like this. This was a horseman.