‘Christ, Lucy, this is getting dangerous. These people are firing at us, for God’s sake.’
‘Should we run for it? Maybe they think we’re a couple of wild boar.’
‘We’ll run for it in a moment,’ said Powerscourt, pulling something from his pocket. ‘When we do, keep to the right side of the track. Below those rocks, they may not be able to see us clearly. After I’ve taken a shot at them, we’ll go.’
Powerscourt climbed very gingerly up the rocks and peered out over a boulder. He fired one shot up the hill and then they fled down the mountainside. The path was never straight. Sometimes there were more hairpins, then they would climb for a hundred yards or so before the track dropped down again towards the sea. Powerscourt was thinking desperately about everything they had done since they arrived in Corsica. What had placed their lives in danger? Why hadn’t he left Lady Lucy behind? Why hadn’t he brought Johnny Fitzgerald instead? Johnny was a much better shot than he was. And what had he said to place them in such peril? Lady Lucy was panting slightly now. They paused just in front of a stretch of open ground. There were no rocks here to give them cover. Only an ancient olive tree guarded the route for the next hundred yards. Powerscourt grabbed a stout stick lying at the side of the road. He took off his jacket and placed it carefully at the end of his makeshift pole. He shoved it forwards at the height he would have been had he been taking the next part of the route at a running crouch. He waited for about five seconds. Somewhere over to the right, another shot rang out. A bullet went neatly through the left-hand shoulder.
‘Christ,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I think we may have to crawl this bit. Do you think you’re up to crawling along this filthy road, Lucy?’
Lady Lucy grinned at him. ‘I always used to beat Thomas and Olivia in the crawling races when they were little, Francis,’ she said. ‘I think I beat you once in a race across the drawing-room floor.’
Powerscourt remembered the game of hide and seek just a few days before, Olivia giggling behind the curtains.
‘All right, Lucy. One shot at them. Then we’ll go.’
Powerscourt fired again across the slopes. Then he set off, crawling as fast as he could go. When he had gone a few paces, he heard another shot, fired up the hill not ten feet away from him. He looked back briefly to see Lady Lucy putting his other pistol back into her bag. Then she too shot off at full speed on all fours, the rocks bumping into her arms.
There was no answering fire from the hills. Lucy and Powerscourt were reunited under a clump of trees.
‘Christ, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I didn’t know you had my other gun. I didn’t know you could shoot like that. Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine. I’ll tell you all about it later,’ said Lady Lucy, ‘we still need to get out of here. Should we abandon this path and run for it across the open country?’
‘I thought of that,’ said her husband, ‘but there’s no cover at all over there. We’d be sitting ducks, visible for miles around. I think we need to run as fast as we can. It’s always harder to hit a moving target. If we sit still in any one place, we’re for it. Have you enough strength for a long run, a couple of hundred yards, Lucy? You’re not too tired? God, I wish I hadn’t brought you here.’
‘I’m fine, Francis, I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. I’d rather not die in Corsica, though, if that’s all right with you.’
Powerscourt took her hand. There were faint trickles of blood near her left wrist where she had collided with a rock. Somehow that made Powerscourt angrier than ever.
They set off at a trot that turned into a gallop and then back into a trot. It was easier on this rocky terrain to run at medium pace rather than at full speed. Powerscourt wondered if anything they had said at the de Courcy house in Aregno could have led to this declaration of war. No, it could not, he decided. And even if they had become suspicious, it was unlikely that the de Courcy family could have organized a shooting party in this amount of time. Hold on a minute, he said to himself, they knew we were coming. They had known at least a day before with the delivery of the card. But somehow he still couldn’t see Alice de Courcy or her daughters hiring a couple of Corsican bandits. The coach driver? He was in the shade of some very large boulders now, the kites, scenting possible human prey perhaps, circling ominously overhead. Lady Lucy was looking pale, but she kept up a good pace. Powerscourt motioned to stop. Ahead was the longest straight stretch of track they had encountered so far. A couple of derelict farmhouses stood on their right, the glass long gone from the windows, a battered door swinging from one hinge.
As if to greet them, a couple of shots pinged off the rocks twenty yards ahead. This little bit here, Powerscourt felt, this could be what their enemies had decided on as the killing field. Well, he bloody well wasn’t going to let them. The trick with the jacket was unlikely to work again. He wondered about Lucy’s hat. He tried to remember what the army instructors in India had told them about ambushes in broken country.
‘Are you all right, Lucy? You’ve done magnificently so far. There’s only one thing for it now. Whatever we do, we can’t stay in the same place. I want you to run for those trees at the end of this straight bit. Run in a zigzag. Vary your pace if you can. While you’re on your way I’m going to take a shot at these characters. They must come out into the open if they’re to get a decent aim. When you’ve got to the far side, do the same for me. See if you can hit one of these bastards. Don’t fire from the same place, dodge about as much as you can.’
Powerscourt didn’t say the chances of hitting somebody armed with a rifle with a pistol at a couple of hundred yards distance were extremely remote. He kissed Lady Lucy briefly on the cheek.
‘Run, my love, run! Run like hell!’
Lady Lucy took two deep breaths and shot out from beneath the trees. She gathered pace. Powerscourt was half-way up a tree, scouring the landscape for the hidden rifles. Lady Lucy was back in her childhood, following the hunting of the stags in her native Scotland with her grandfather. Only this afternoon she was the stag. She made a dramatic stop three-quarters of the way across. Still no shots. With a final burst of speed she disappeared into the shadows. She was panting deeply. She was through. She had made it. Still no shots.
Powerscourt came down from his tree. Maybe they didn’t want the woman. Maybe they had no quarrel with her. Maybe they wanted the man. A faint reminder of the smell from Captain Antonio Imperiali’s cheroot came back to him as he took several deep breaths. Something was nagging at his brain. Now was not the time to think of it. Lady Lucy had found an overturned cart at the side of the road. She climbed half-way up. There was a good view of the mountainside behind Francis through the broken wood.
Powerscourt set off at a gentle pace. Lady Lucy peered through her makeshift stockade. What had her grandfather told about shooting pistols? She saw a shape coming out from behind a clump of trees two hundred yards up the hill. Powerscourt had suddenly accelerated. He was running very fast now. The man on the mountain drew his rifle up to his shoulder. Just before he settled it, Lady Lucy fired. She thought the bullet went into the trees to his left. The man ducked down. Powerscourt was three-quarters of the way across. The man rose again a couple of yards to the right from where he had been before. He must have been crawling on all fours. Lady Lucy fired again. She didn’t see where the bullet went. She only knew that her husband was pulling her off the cart and behind a clump of trees.