‘One night,’ he conceded. ‘I’ve brought my sleeping bag and if they can find me some hole or corner to bunk up in, I’ll stay for one night. Long enough to make certain I’m not leaving you in a nest of robber barons, Left Bank lounge lizards or Portuguese pimps. And time enough to inspect the kitchens.’
This was not what Dorcas wanted to hear but her silence was witness to her acceptance of one further night’s protective police presence. A stab of uncertainty, Joe decided.
He was seeing the child’s quite natural response to being catapulted back into her old life. She would soon acclimatize. By the end of the week, she’d be running around brown and barefoot, screeching at her father and herding the younger children, back to being the girl he remembered meeting in the spring.
He patted the hand still clinging to his sleeve. ‘Don’t worry, Dorcas. You took the Château Houdart by storm—this one will be easier. The occupants will all be friendly and you’ll be back in the bosom of your family.’ Feeling no relaxation of her grip, he added: ‘I would never leave you in a bad situation, Dorcas. You know that.’
‘Do you mean it?’
‘Of course,’ he said stoutly. ‘Promise.’
She released his gear lever arm. ‘Sorry, Joe! Nerves. Go on then. Advance!’
The motor car started up again.
The watcher in the airy space above changed position to follow the progress of the car from the vantage point of a narrow slit which widened at the base. A slim hand reached out to touch the cool limestone that an ancient mason had gouged out and rounded to accommodate the barrel of a musket. A trigger finger slid along the groove angled and channelled precisely to aim at the centre of the grassed courtyard and paused, targeting in imagination, one of the dark heads below.
Dorcas yelped with delight at the sight of the hooded gypsy cart parked in the centre of the courtyard as they passed through the narrow entrance. Joe eased over the cobbles and on to the grass to station his Morris alongside. The midday sun beating down on the open, treeless space was, in itself, a weapon deployed against invasion. The architecture surrounding them was so bristlingly military, Joe almost expected to hear the clang of the drawbridge descending behind them, the imperious challenge of a sentry, the rattle and swish of a sword being drawn. But no unfriendly sound reached his straining ears. The clang of a metal pail and the whinny of a horse came from some depth in the building, reassuring and domestic. No human greeting followed. He sat on, hands still clenched around the steering wheel.
‘Joe? Are you all right? What’s the matter?’
He began automatically to make reassuring noises but she interrupted him. ‘Stop that! You’re making me nervous! Something’s wrong, isn’t it? You’ve gone quite pale, you can’t seem to let go of the wheel and your eyes are swivelling all over the place. Not a pretty sight! What have you seen? If I didn’t know what a thug you are, I’d say you were in a blue funk … Joe?’
Joe made an effort to ease the constriction in his throat, released the wheel and shuddered. ‘Sorry, Dorcas! Feet of clay, I’m afraid. All those years of soldiering … if you survive them, you never lose it, you know … But you’re right. Blue funk it is! You’re the only person ever to have caught me in one—or, rather, recognized it for what it is: fear. Soldier’s best friend. Keeps you alive. It’s the icicle-between-the-shoulder-blades feeling of a gun barrel sighting on you … the normally steady foot that hesitates and changes course a split second before treading down on something nasty. An instinct for survival.’
While he muttered on, his eyes were ranging round the tall curtain walls, taking in the dozens of windows and arrow slits from any one of which they could have been under surveillance. ‘Officers were the favourite targets for snipers in the war and easily distinguishable at a distance. Peaked caps, side arms. High casualty rate. Lucky to have survived. For a moment I had a distinct and familiar feeling that someone was drawing a bead on me. Ridiculous! Going a bit barmy? But, of course—when you think about it—I was reacting just as the military architect intended. Freezing like a trapped rabbit! All these defences are carefully worked out and we seem to have parked ourselves right in the centre of an ancient killing ground. The earth under our tyres is probably steeped in blood! I wouldn’t give much for the chances of any rough-tough army of medieval routiers with pillage in mind making it through to the keep from here, would you?’
‘But you’re not going mad, Joe. There was something moving up there,’ Dorcas agreed slowly, staring upwards. He noticed that she didn’t point and looked quickly away. ‘I caught a flash of something white. Up there in that turret. North-eastern, would that be?’
Her voice changed from calming to startled and she gasped as, with a clatter and whoosh of wings, a flock of birds soared into the air. They eddied and swirled and with one mind descended on a different turret roof. Dorcas exclaimed with pleasure and relief. ‘Well, you can come off watch now, Joe! But we weren’t wrong, were we? The lookout turret was occupied. By peaceful white doves!’
Joe smiled. ‘Yes, doves,’ he agreed.
‘And by whoever disturbed them,’ he added silently. He kept the thought to himself. The suspicion that someone had been covertly observing their arrival was vaguely menacing and he wished he had not risked transmitting his fears to young Dorcas.
He needed to take action. He needed to assert himself and shake off the menacing influence of his surroundings. He gave two peremptory peeps on the hooter and got out of the car.
The response was shrieks and excited laughter. Half a dozen children appeared from a dark doorway and came tearing over the courtyard. Three of them, two boys and a small girl, hurled themselves at Dorcas, chattering in a mixture of French and English. The oldest boy Joe could just identify as her brother Peter who seemed to have grown over the summer to eye level with Dorcas.
The boy released his sister from a hug and went to stand shyly in front of Joe. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he began his prepared speech, ‘for bringing her. We’re all just sitting down to lunch in the hall. Will you come? No, no! Leave the luggage. I’ll get someone to help with it later. Now, you’ll be wanting to wash your hands … But first …’
Well, things were looking up, Joe thought, noting young Peter’s helpful manners. The lad was shooting up in size. Slim like his father and blessed with Orlando’s distinctive thick auburn hair and fine features, he promised to become a handsome young man. In response to a sergeant major’s glare from Peter, the others formed up in height order for presentation.
‘Dicky, my brother, and Rosie, my sister, I believe you know, sir. The other three are … um … children of the household. All French.’ Peter made the introductions in their language: ‘Monsieur, je vous présente: Clothilde, René, et le petit Marius … Mon oncle, Joseph.’
Joe shook a series of sticky hands and murmured the appropriate formulae.
As intrigued by the round-eyed French contingent as they were by him, he took the time to lean over and talk to each child in turn. He established that the fair-haired Clothilde, plump as a Fragonard cherub, was the daughter of one of the guests. She confided that she was seven and a half years old. The two boys, one eight and the other, le petit Marius, not quite certain of his age—or unwilling to confide it—were the sons of the cook. Joe rather thought, judging by the set of the jaw and the ugly glint in his eye, that Marius did not want it revealed that he was the youngest of this group and didn’t press him.
But Joe quickly understood that he was not the star of the show. His questions answered, all eyes now slid past him, drawn by the glamour of a motor car. With a conspiratorial wink for Peter, Joe invited them to do what they had clearly been dying to do since they came into the courtyard. He lifted them all into the car and Peter organized a rota for sitting in the driver’s seat and honking the horn. Distracted by the giggles and squabbles, Joe took some time to realize that Orlando had appeared and propped himself in the doorway, watching them with amused indulgence. He called out Dorcas’s name, held out his arms and she ran to him with a squeal of delight, hopping and chattering like a magpie.