Peregrine scrambled out. 'I didn't have it cocked,' he said without any attempt at apology, 'it was just in case anyone attacked us in the night.'
'Well, they didn't,' said Glodstone. 'It would have been a dashed sight more helpful if you'd let me know it was raining. As it was, I got soaked.'
'But you told me I wasn't to wake you. You said '
'I know what I said but there's a difference between blathering on about sheep being people and letting me get pneumonia.'
'Actually it was a pig,' said Peregrine. 'When you started snoring it started moving this way and I thought I'd better go out and head it off.'
'All right, let's get some breakfast,' said Glodstone. 'The one good thing about this drizzle is that we'll be able to approach the Château without being seen, especially if we move off as soon as possible.'
But getting anywhere near the Château proved easier said than done. They had covered a couple of miles when the plateau ended on the edge of a deep ravine whose sides were thick with thorny undergrowth. Glodstone looked over and hesitated. There was no question of fighting their way down it. 'I think we'd better head round to the north,' he said but Peregrine was consulting his map.
'If I'm right,' he said, adopting an expression Glodstone considered his own and consequently resented, 'we're too far to the north already, the Château lies three miles south-south-west from here.'
'What makes you so sure?' said Glodstone, once more feeling that Peregrine was getting the upper hand.
'I counted the paces.'
'The paces?'
'We've come about three thousand yards and if we'd been going in the right direction we should have come to these woods by now.'
'What woods?' said Glodstone looking round wearily.
'The ones on the map,' said Peregrine, 'they're marked green and the river is just beyond them.'
Glodstone peered at the map and was forced to agree that they were woods opposite the Château. 'Must be something wrong with my compass,' he said. 'All right, you lead the way but for God's sake go carefully and don't hurry. We can't afford to take any chance of being spotted now.' And having tried to ensure that Peregrine wouldn't march off at some godawful speed he plodded along behind him. This time there was no mistake and an hour later they had entered the woods marked on the map. They sloped away from the plateau and then rose to a ridge.
'The river must be on the other side,' said Peregrine, 'We have only to get to the top and the Château should be opposite us.'
'Only,' muttered Glodstone, disentangling his sodden trousers from a bramble bush. But Peregrine was already pushing ahead, weaving his way through the undergrowth with a cat-like stealth and litheness that Glodstone couldn't emulate. Before they had reached the ridge, he had twice had to retrieve his monocle from bushes and once, when Peregrine suddenly froze and signalled to him to do the same, had stood awkwardly with one foot poised over a pile of twigs.
'What the devil are we waiting for?' he asked in a hoarse whisper. 'I can't stand here like a damned heron on one leg.'
'I could have sworn I heard something,' said Peregrine.
'Another bloody sheep, I daresay,' muttered Glodstone but Peregrine was immune to sarcasm.
'You don't get sheep in woods. They're ruminants. They eat grass and '
'Have two blasted stomachs. I know all that. I didn't come all this way to listen to a lecture on animal physiology. Get a move on.'
'But you said '
Glodstone put his foot down to end the discussion and, shoving past Peregrine, blundered on up the hill. As he crested the rise, he stopped for a moment to get his breath back only to have it taken away again by the view ahead. Like some holy shrine to which he had at last come, the Château Carmagnac stood on a pinnacle of rock half a mile away across the Gorge du Boose. Even to Glodstone the Château exceeded a life-time's devotion to the unreal. Towers and turrets topped by spire-like roofs were clustered around an open courtyard which seemed to overhang the river. An ornate stone balustrade topped the cliff and to the south, beneath the largest tower, was an archway closed by a massive pair of gates.
Then, realizing that he might be seen from its windows, he dropped to the turf, and, reaching for his binoculars, scanned the place in an ecstasy mixed with anxiety, as if the Château was some mirage which might at any moment disappear. But the glasses only magnified his joy. Everything about the Château was perfect. Window-boxes of geraniums hung from the first floor as did a stone balcony; a tiny belvedere perched on a slim promontory above the cliff; orange trees in tubs stood on either side of the steps leading down from doors set in a round tower whose walls were pierced at intervals to indicate the passage of a staircase that circled up it. In short, all was as Glodstone would have had it. And as he looked, the sun broke through the clouds and the spires and the flagstones of the courtyard gleamed silver in its light.
Glodstone put down the binoculars and studied the surrounding landscape. It was rather unpleasantly at odds with the Château itself and while the latter had a festive air about it, the same couldn't be said for its environs. To put it bluntly, the country was as bleak and barren as the Château was ornamental. A few rather desiccated walnut trees had been planted, and presumably irrigated ever since, to provide an avenue for the portion of the drive closest to the main gates but for the rest the Château was surrounded by open ground which afforded no cover. And the drive itself was formidable. Cut into the rock to the south of the Château, it writhed its way up the cliff in a series of extraordinary bends which suggested a truly maniacal desire for the spectacular on the part of its designer. Finally, to make the approach by road still more secure, a wooden bridge without a guard rail spanned the river.
'Dashed cunning,' Glodstone muttered. 'There's no way of crossing that bridge without signalling your coming.' As if to prove the truth of this observation, a van turned off the road below them and rattled slowly across the planks before grinding its way in bottom gear up the quarried drive. Glodstone watched it reach the walnut trees and disappear round the rear of the Château. Then he turned hopefully to the north in search of an easier way up. True, the slope was less perpendicular than the cliff but the few stunted thorn trees managing to grow among the rocks afforded little cover. And the rocks themselves seemed untrustworthy, to judge by the number that had rolled down and now formed a barrier along the river bank. Last but by no means least in the list of natural hazards was the river itself. It swirled round the base of the cliff with a dark and malevolent turbulence that suggested it was both deep and subject to dangerous currents.
'Well, we've had a preliminary look at the place,' he told Peregrine. 'What we need now is to establish a base camp out of sight and get something warm inside us while we consider the next move.'
They crawled back off the ridge and found a suitable space among the bracken. There, while Peregrine heated up some baked beans on the stove, Glodstone sat on his rucksack sucking his pipe and pondered what to do.
Chapter 13
For the rest of the day Glodstone lay in the sun drying himself out and keeping a close watch on the Château.
'They're bound to have some system for watching the roads,' he told Peregrine, 'and for signalling when someone suspicious puts in an appearance and once we find out what that is we can bypass it.'
'Yes, but we're not on the road,' said Peregrine. 'I should have thought the simplest thing would be to swim the river and shin up the cliff...What's the matter?'
'Nothing,' said Glodstone when he could bring himself to speak, 'And when do you propose we do this? In broad bloody daylight?'