The man lifted his head. He seemed to be staring straight at her, though in the shadows of his hood it was impossible to tell. He raised an arm as if in greeting. The plastic cape spread like a bat’s wing. Slowly and deliberately, like a child stalking a pet, he began walking towards her.
Ellie turned and ran. Back up the hill, back towards the lights and safety. Her shoes were impracticaclass="underline" the heels skidded and teetered on the uneven cobbles. She pulled them off and ran in stockinged feet, feeling the damp ooze between her toes. There was no one to see her. Through the gateless arch that was no protection, along undefended ramparts, until she came out in a square between the looming blocks of some government ministry. She glanced back, but there was no one, no rush of pursuing footsteps or shadows advancing along the wall.
She looked around to get her bearings. Which way was the hotel? It couldn’t be more than a quarter of a mile away, but she was desperate for a cab. She had a cramp in her side; her legs burned and her feet ached.
And there he was.
She couldn’t believe it. He’d appeared like a ghost, like a vampire out of the air. The spectral white coat flapped in the breeze as he walked towards her across the square.
Ellie’s brain was in meltdown. All she could think was that it was impossible. Impossible. How do you escape a man who can scale a cliff in the blink of an eye?
She ran.
‘Wait,’ a voice called from behind her.
She ran. Past an unmanned guard booth, round a corner and down a windowless alley. At the far end she could see street lights and cars flashing by on Roosevelt Boulevard. If only she could make it. A crack echoed off the walls like a shot. Did the man have a gun? Did ghosts need guns? A split second later she realised it was one her shoes: she’d dropped it. She left it in the gutter where it had fallen.
She reached the main road. A taxi was coming round the bend and its light was on. She waved frantically to flag it down and almost threw herself onto the back seat.
‘Sofitel.’ She had to repeat it three times to make herself understood.
The driver didn’t want to take her. It was only a few hundred metres, she was wasting her money. She pushed a twenty-euro note into his hand and he stopped complaining.
As the car pulled away, she looked back. Condensation blurred the windows; the lights of the cars behind dazzled her. She thought there might be a figure standing under the lamp at the end of the alley, but she couldn’t be sure.
Ellie made the taxi do a full circuit of the city centre before it dropped her at the hotel. She wasn’t sure who she thought she would fool. She kept her face pressed to the window, but didn’t see anyone. At the Sofitel, she hurried into the lobby and made straight for the lifts. All she wanted was to be in bed behind a locked door. Unless the ghost could walk through walls.
‘There you are.’
A hand clamped down on her shoulder. She would scream, she decided: call security, the police, anyone. They couldn’t just grab her in a public place. But the air wouldn’t come out of her lungs.
‘You left work without me,’ an aggrieved voice complained.
It was Lechowski. He’d lost his tie. Could he have been the ghost? He looked too short; he certainly smelled as if he’d spent the evening in the bar. He looked her up and down in a way that was supposed to make her feel sexy, but only made her cringe.
‘What happened to your shoes?’
She managed a weak smile. ‘They were giving me blisters. I walked up from the bottom of the valley.’
‘You should have taken the lift.’
Ellie stopped trying to edge past him and stared. ‘What?’
‘The public lift. It takes you up from the valley to the city. By the Cité Judiciaire.’ He laughed, assailing her with another blast of mint-edged alcoholic vapour. ‘Only in Luxembourg are they so lazy. Maybe we go tomorrow, ride it together? For now, I buy you that drink I promised.’
He made a swipe for her elbow. But Ellie hadn’t run for her life through the streets of Luxembourg to be cornered by a creep like Lechowski. She pirouetted away, stepped neatly past him and was inside the open lift before he could move.
‘Maybe another time.’
XII
Jocelin’s mother — my lord Guy’s wife — died some years ago. It’s something Jocelin and I have in common, though it doesn’t bring us any closer.
Guy has decided to remarry. I think, cruelly, perhaps he’s so disappointed in his heir he wants to try again. But in fact, Jocelin will be a perfectly acceptable heir. He’ll keep his boot firmly planted on his vassals and tenants; he’ll collect their tithes and their taxes enthusiastically; if there’s a war, he’ll fight energetically for his Duke and probably win lands and favour.
But Guy can’t wait for a war to expand his territory. Jocelin has three sisters, and they’ll need dowries soon. For a long time, Guy has had his eye on an estate across the river: good pasture, forests with rights of hunting and firewood, fields to grow corn and a mill to grind it. The land belongs to the Beauchamp family, but they are rarely there. Most of their interests are in England now: crossing the sea each time one of their tenants demands justice, or if the King decides to visit, has become tedious. They have a daughter, and they are willing to endow her with the Normandy estates as her marriage portion. Messengers go to England with a proposal, return with a price, risk themselves at sea once more with a counteroffer. Guy holds two farms in Berkshire whose rent he never sees: they become part of the bargain too.
At last the contract is agreed. Gornemant the seneschal sails to England to collect Guy’s new bride. He takes four knights, three grooms, six servants, a butler, a cook — and me.
When I left England I was a boy with the tonsure raw in his scalp. Now I am sixteen: a man, in some ways. My hair has grown out, though my companions still call me ‘monk’, and I have a credible beard. I will never be as big as Jocelin, but I occasionally beat him in the training ground. Every time I do, it feels like one step nearer my revenge.
We step ashore in Dover, a mean little town at the mouth of a river. High cliffs loom over us. I only ever saw England on my way to Normandy, and that through my tears. But I can tell the country is prospering. King Henry has been on the throne some thirty years, and peace makes England flourish. When I meet my uncle in Windsor, he wears a scarlet cloak and a vair mantle, fresh from the furrier. When he rests his elbows on the table, it leaves a residue of chalk dust.
He serves me larks’ tongues and capons, and wine he has brought from Burgundy. Then he tells me the king has appointed a new castellan to my father’s castle. I don’t know, but I guess, that my uncle has profited in some way from this arrangement. It’s quite clear that I’ll never claim my inheritance.
‘But look at you,’ he says, with gruesome joviality. He hasn’t looked at me properly all day. ‘You’re a man, now. You can make your own way.’
I know what he means. I’ve grown up; his obligations are discharged. He’s rid of me.
I stare at my plate. ‘I’m still a squire,’ I mumble.
‘You’ll be a knight soon.’
‘What about the men who killed my father?’
My uncle shifts uneasily on his stool. Once a year or so I write him a letter reporting my progress, and each time I ask this question. He has never answered it.
‘It was impossible to find them. There were no witnesses.’
‘I witnessed it.’