Henri sat at the head of the table. “Maman?”

“Henri?”

Henri paused with a spoonful of soup just inches above his plate. “I will marry Mademoiselle Pellemont, as you wish.”

“I am very pleased, Henri.” The old lady was not going to revel in her victory, but offered her response very gravely and with the smallest inclination of her head.

Lucille showed more pleasure. “I think that’s wonderful news.”

“She has excellent hips,” the Dowager said. “Her mother had sixteen children, and her grandmother twelve, so it’s a good choice.”

“A very solid choice,” Henri Lassan said with a trace of a smile.

“She has a very lovely nature,” Lucille said warmly, and it was true. There might be those who thought Marie Pellemont to have the placidity and attractiveness of a gentle and not very energetic cow, but Lucille had always liked Marie who was her own age, and who would now become the new Comtesse de Lassan.

A betrothal ceremony was fixed for a fortnight’s time and, even though the chateau had fallen on lean times, the family tried hard to make apt provision for the occasion. All but one of the chateau’s saddle horses were sold so that the guests could receive their traditional gifts, sword knots for the men and nosegays for the women, and so there would be lavish food and decent wine for the guests of quality. The villagers and tenantry must also be fed, and provided with great vats of cider. Lucille found herself busy baking apple-cakes, and pressing great trays of nettle-wrapped cheese. She made sure that the hams hanging in the chateau’s chimneys were not too nibbled by bats. She cut away the worst of the ravages, then rubbed pepper into the dark hams to keep the animals at bay. It was a happy time. The days were lengthening and growing warmer.

Then, just a week before the betrothal ceremony, the first armed brigands were reported in the chateau’s vicinity.

The report came from a man ditching the top fields above the mill-stream. He had watched as some ragged fugitives, all armed and wearing the vestiges of imperial uniforms, had skulked along the stream-bed. They had been carrying two slaughtered lambs.

That night Henri Lassan slept with a loaded musket beside his bed. He barricaded the bridges over the moat with old cider vats, then released geese into the yard to act as sentries. Geese were more reliable than dogs, but no strangers disturbed the geese, neither that night nor the next, and Henri dared to hope that the vagabonds had merely been passing through the district.

Then, just the very next day, a horrific report came of a farmhouse burned beyond the next village of Seleglise. The smoke of the burning barn could be plainly seen from the chateau. The farmer, all his family, and both his maid-servants had been killed. The details of the massacre, brought by the miller of Seleglise, were appalling, so much so that Henri did not tell either his mother or Lucille. The miller, an elderly and devout man, shook his head. “They were Frenchmen who did this, my Lord.”

“Or Poles, or Germans, or Italians.” Lassan knew there were desperate men of all those nationalities released from Napoleon’s defeated armies. Somehow he did not wish to believe that Frenchmen could do such things to their own kind.

“All the same,” the miller said, “they were once soldiers of France.”

“True,” and that same day Henri Lassan donned the uniform he had hoped never to wear again, strapped on a sword, and led a party of his neighbours on a hunt for the murderers. The farmers who rode with him were brave men, but even they baulked at riding into the deep forest beyond Seleglise where the murderous vagabonds had doubtless taken shelter. The farmers contented themselves with firing shots blindly into the trees. They scared a lot of pigeons and lacerated many leaves, but no shots were fired back.

Lassan considered postponing the betrothal ceremony, but his mother was adamantly against such a course. It had taken the Dowager the best part of twenty years to persuade her adult son to take a bride, and she was not about to risk that happy eventuality because of a few vagrant scum lurking five miles away. It seemed her faith was rewarded, for there were no further incidents, and every guest travelled in safety to the chateau.

The betrothal ceremony, though modest, went very well. The weather was fine, Marie Pellemont looked as beautiful as her relieved mother could make her, while Henri Lassan, in a suit of fine blue cloth that had belonged to his father, looked properly noble. The Dowager had brought out the remains of the family’s silver, including a great dish, three feet across and a foot deep, which was cast in the form of a scallop shell cradling the de Lassan coat-of-arms. A flautist, violinist and drummer from the village provided the music, there was country dancing, and there was the solemn giving of pledges followed by the exchange of gifts. Mademoiselle Pellemont received a bolt of beautiful pale-blue silk from China; a treasure that the Dowager had possessed for fifty years, always meaning to make it into a gown fit for Versailles itself. Henri received a silver-hilled pistol that had once belonged to Marie’s father. The village cure muddled the words of his blessing, while the local doctor, a widower, danced so much with Lucille that the tongues wagged happily about the chateau’s courtyard from which the compost heap had been removed in honour of this great day. Soon, the villagers thought, the widow Castineau would also be married, and not before time, because Lucille was nearly thirty, childless, and was a woman of the most excellent kindness and disposition. The doctor, the village thought, could do far far worse, though doubtless the widow Castineau could do far better.

By midnight all the guests had gone, except for three male cousins from Rouen who would spend the night in the chateau. Henri put his new pistol into a drawer, then went to the kitchen where his three cousins were sousing themselves with good Calvados. Lucille and Marie, the elderly kitchen-maid, were scouring the great scallop dish with handfuls of abrasive straw, while the Dowager was complaining that Madame Pellemont had been insufficiently appreciative of the bolt of silk. “I warrant she hasn’t seen fabric of that quality since before the revolution.”

“Marie liked it,” Lucille was ever the peace-maker, “and she’s promised to make her wedding dress from it, Maman.”

Henri, reminded of that ordeal which he faced in a month’s time, said he was going outside to release the geese. He did so, then, wondering whether he had made the right choice by agreeing to marry, he leaned against the chateau’s wall and stared up at the full moon. It was a warm night, even muggy, and the moon was surrounded by a gauzy halo. He could hear music coming from the village and he supposed that the revelry was continuing in the wineshop by the church.

“It’s going to rain tomorrow.” The Dowager came out from the kitchen door and looked up at the hazed moon.

“We need some rain.”

“It’s a warm night.” The Dowager offered her arm to her son. “Perhaps it will be a hot summer. I do hope so. I notice that I feel the cold more keenly than I used to.”

Henri walked his mother to the bridge which led to the dairy. They stopped on the bridge’s planks, just short of the new barricade, and stared down into the still, black and moon-reflecting water of the moat.

“I see you’re wearing your father’s sword,” the Dowager suddenly said.

“Yes.”

“I’m glad.” The Dowager lifted her head to listen to the music which still sounded from the village. “It’s almost like the old days.”

“Is it?”

“We used to dance a great deal before the revolution. Your father was a great dancer, and had a fine voice.”

“I know.”

The Dowager smiled. “Thank you for agreeing to marry, Henri.”

Henri smiled, but said nothing.