Nine Coaches Waiting

The door shut quietly, lopping off Jules' embroidery of his favourite motif. I heard his voice faintly, fading off into the dawn-hush that held the forest. I hadn't realised how quiet it was outside. Not a bough moved; not a twig brushed the shingles. Philippe breathed softly beside me. From somewhere a woodpigeon began its hoarse roucouling.

Soon the sun would be up. It would be a lovely day. I lay back beside Philippe, shaking as if I had the fever.

The reprieve from terror had been so sudden that it had thrown me out of gear. All through that conversation I had crouched, straining every sense to interpret the two men's intentions, but with my mind spi

But something fretted at me still. The whole conversation had had about it a curious air of inversion, something off-key that had sounded in Bernard's defence of me and in that slow, deliberative tone he had used.

I lay there quietly, savouring our safety and the stillness of Dieudo

On the thought I came upright in the darkness, dry-lipped, my heart going wild again in my breast.

Bernard must surely have heard him. Of course Bernard had heard him.

Bernard had known we were there.

So that was it. No other explanation would fit the facts and explain the curious overtones to that conversation. No wonder it had seemed off-key. No wonder I had been bogged down between friend and enemy.

Bernard had known. And it hadn't suited him to find us while Jules was there. That was why, though he'd been interrupted on his way up to the loft, he hadn't finished the search. That was why he had refused to "hear" what Jules had heard; why he had tried to get Jules to go on ahead while he stayed behind to "close up".

It also explained very effectively his playing-down of the effect of our flight at Valmy. Whatever was discovered in the morning, it was obvious that Bernard's presence in the forest would have to be explained. The simplest and safest thing to do was obviously to tell some version of the truth. With me crouched not four feet above his head he'd had to play a very careful game. I was listening, and he didn't want to flush the quarry… not before he had a chance to come back alone.

Because of course he would come back. I was out of my blankets almost before the thought touched me, and creeping soundlessly across the floor to the trap-door. For all I had heard Jules talking away down the forest path I was taking no risks of a door that closed to leave the enemy inside and waiting. I lay flat beside the trap and slowly, slowly, eased it up till the tiniest crack showed between it and the floor. I peered through as best I could. Some light through the badly-fitting shutters showed an empty room.

I flew back to Philippe's side, but as I put out a hand to shake him awake I checked myself. I knelt beside him, my hands clutched tightly together, and shut my eyes. I could not wake the child on this wave of shaking terror. I must take control again. I must. I gave myself twenty seconds, counting them steadily.

He would come back. He would take Jules home in the shooting-brake, let himself be seen starting for Valmy, and then he would come back. He would be as quick as he could, because the night was wearing on for morning, and the night and the day were all they had.

I didn't take the thought further; I didn't want it put into words. I left it formless, a beat of fear through my body. How they would get away with it I couldn't-wouldn't-imagine, but in my present state of mind and in that dark hole at the top of the lonely forest anything seemed possible. I knelt there and made myself count steadily on through perhaps the worst twenty seconds of my life, while the terror, pressing closer, blew itself up into fantasy… the Demon King watching us from behind that bright window a mile away, hunting us down from his wheel-chair by some ghastly kind of radar that tracked us through the forest… I whipped the mad thought aside but the image persisted; Léon de Valmy, like a deformed and giant shadow, reaching out for us wherever we happened to be. Why had I thought I could get the better of him? Nobody ever had, except one.

The silly tears were ru

SEVENTH COACH

CHAPTER 16

Oh Sammy, Sammy,

vy worn't there a alleybi!

Dickens: Pickwick Papers.

He came awake instantly. "Mademoiselle? Is it morning?"

"Yes. Get up, chicken. We've got to go."

"All right. Are you crying, mademoiselle?"

"Good heavens, no! What makes you think that?"

“Something fell on me. Wet."

"Dew, mon p’tit. The roof leaks. Now come along."

He jumped up straight away, and in a very short space of time we were down that ladder, and Philippe was lacing his shoes while I made a lightning raid on William Blake's cupboards.

"Biscuits," I said cheerfully, "and butter and-yes, a tin of sardines. And I brought cake and chocolate. Here's riches! Trust a man to look after himself. He's all stocked up like a squirrel."

Philippe smiled. His face looked a little less pinched this morning, though the grey light filtering through the shutters still showed him pale. God knows how it showed me. I felt like I walking ghost.

"Can we make up the stove, mademoiselle?"

"Afraid not. We'd better not wait here for Monsieur Blake. There are too many people about in the wood. We'll go on."

"Where to? Soubirous? Is that where he is?"

“Yes but we're not going towards Soubirous. I think we'll make straight for Thonon."

"Now?"

"Yes."

“Without breakfast?" His mouth drooped and I'm sure mine did too. There had been a tin of coffee in the cupboard and the stove was hot; I'd have given almost anything to have taken time to make some. Almost anything.

I said: "We'll find a place when the sun's up and have breakfast outside. Here, put these in your pockets." I threw a quick glance round the hut "All right, let's go. We'll make sure no-one's about first, shall we? You take that window… carefully now."

We reco