‘All right. Shall I take this scarf?’
‘Yes. Was that your warm jersey you put on? Good. We’ll lock the balcony window, I think … Okay now? Be terribly quiet.’
I paused by the door, my hand on the key and listened. Philippe drifted to my elbow like a ghost. His eyes looked enormous in a pale face. I could hear nothing. Beyond the door the great house stretched dark and almost untenanted. And Madame de Valmy was certainly asleep, and Bernard was drunk, and the tiger himself – waiting down there for death to be discovered – the tiger himself was crippled …
With a hand that slipped a little on the doorknob I eased the door open, then took Philippe’s hand and tiptoed with him out into the dark corridor. Past the clock that had sounded midnight for us, down the stairs where I had lost my slipper, along the dim stretches of corridor walled with blind doors and the side-long painted eyes of portraits … the great house slid past us in the darkness as insubstantial as scenery in a Cocteau fantasy, until our breathless and ghostly flight was blocked by the heavy door that gave onto the stableyard and freedom.
It was locked. There must be some other way left for the servants to come in, but I didn’t dare turn aside to explore. The heavy key turned easily and quietly, but still the door wouldn’t move. My hands slid over the studded wood in the darkness, searching for a bolt. Beside me I heard Philippe take a little breath and began to shiver. Standing on tiptoe, groping above my head, I found the bolt, and pulled. It moved with a scream like a mandrake torn up in a midnight wood. The sound seemed to go on and on, winding back along the corridor in a creeping echo. I pulled at the door with shaking hands, listening all the time for the whine of the wheelchair. The door wouldn’t budge. Still it wouldn’t budge. I tried to feel if it had a spring lock beside the key, but couldn’t find one. He would be coming any minute now, to find us cornered in this dark passage-way. It didn’t need the shrieking bolts to tell him where we were and what we were doing. I could almost hear my panic-stricken thoughts pouring down the corridor to shout it at him. He would know. Oh yes, he would know. We were en rapport, the Demon King and I …
‘It’s all right,’ whispered Philippe, ‘I brought my torch. Look.’
He stooped down to the other bolt, drew it quietly, and the door opened.
We went out into the night air.
15
Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.
George Meredith: The Woods of Westermain.
I had no idea how to find William Blake’s forest hut, but from my window at Valmy I had noticed that the light seemed to be very near a broad, straight ride that slashed up through the pines from somewhere near the Valmy bridge. Philippe and I had only to cross the bridge and climb up from the road, bearing slightly right, and we were bound to strike the open ride. Once in this we must follow it up towards the first ridge, and no doubt sooner or later the light itself would guide us to the hut.
It sounded easy, but in practice it was a long and exhausting climb. I dared not use Philippe’s torch so near the road, nor later in the ride, open as this was to every window on Valmy’s west front.
In the forest it was very dark. My eyes had by now adjusted themselves, and we were able to pick our way between the trees without actual mishap, but very slowly, and with many stumbles and grazes, as the thick carpet of pine-needles was criss-crossed, and in places piled, with dead and spiky branches left when the woods were thinned. Once Philippe tripped and was only saved from falling by my hand, and once I had to bite back a cry of pain as I stumbled against some fallen snag of wood that stabbed at my leg for all the world like a sword. But Philippe made no complaint and, crazy though it may sound, I myself, with every yard of midnight wood put between me and Valmy, felt safer and happier. This wild mountain-side, tingling with the smell of the pines, was for all its secret and murmurous life no place of fear: that was Valmy with its lights and luxury. I realised that once again the word in my mind was ‘escape’: it was as if the brilliance and comfort of life at Valmy had been closing in, subtle, stifling, over-sophisticated. Now I was free. … The darkness took us. The air was cool and the silence was thick with peace.
My guess had been right. After perhaps twenty minutes of our steep, stumbling progress we came at a climbing angle upon the open ride. This was some fifteen yards wide, and ran in a dead-straight slash from top to bottom of the hillside. I supposed it was a fire-break, or a road left open for tractors – whatever its purpose, it would be easier going for Philippe and myself.
It was, we found, very little better underfoot, as here, too, the dead boughs were thickly strewn. But at least we could see to pick our way. Clutching at my hand, and panting, Philippe climbed gamely beside me. We turned once to look at Valmy. On the far side of the valley the château, catching the moon, swam pale above its own woods, its side stabbed with a single light. Léon de Valmy still waited.
With a little shiver I turned my face back towards the sweet-smelling wild mountain of Dieudonné, and we plodded on up the moonlit canyon between the pines.
‘All right, Philippe?’
‘Yes, mademoiselle.’
If any other creature moved in the forest that night, we never saw it. The only eyes that glittered at us were the stars, and the million drops of stardew that shivered on the fallen boughs. The breeze was failing, and in its pauses the breaking of the dead stuff under our feet sounded like thunder. I found myself, absurdly, with a quick over-the-shoulder glance at Léon de Valmy’s remote little light, trying to tread more softly, and eyeing in some dread the gaunt black shadows that the moon flung streaming behind us down the open ride.
But no new terror waited under the swimming moon, and, when we stopped to rest, no sound came to us except the laboured sound of our own breathing, and the age-old singing of the pines, and the rustle of wind-made showers as the dew shook down from the boughs.
It was Philippe who saw the hut. I had been straining my eyes upwards through the trees on our left for a glimpse of William’s light, and as we neared the summit of the hill, had begun to worry to myself in case we had already passed it hidden from us by the thick pines.
Then, as we stopped for one of our now frequent breathers, Philippe tugged at my hand.
‘There,’ he said breathlessly, and nodded towards a break in the southern wall of trees.
I turned thankfully, only to pause and stare, while a little chill slid over me.
It was certainly a hut – the hut, as it was placed pretty well where I had expected to find it. It was small and square, beautifully made, chalet-fashion, of hewn pine logs, with a railed verandah round it, a steep-pitched overhanging roof, and slatted wooden shutters. At back and sides the pines crowded so closely up to the eaves that you would have thought a lamp would be burning even by day.
But now the windows showed no light at all. At one there was a tiny glow, as of firelight, but the welcoming lamp – the star – was out. I stood clutching the boy’s hand, and staring at those blank windows.
I noticed all at once how black the trees were and how they crouched and crowded over the hut. I saw how our shadows streamed back from us grotesque and ink-black down the open ride. I moved, and a giant gesture mocked me. The night was full of whispering.
‘He’ll be fast asleep,’ said Philippe cheerfully, and not whispering at all.
I almost jumped, then looked down at him. I had to control an impulse to hug him. ‘Why, of course,’ I said, not too steadily. ‘Of course. I – I was forgetting it’ll soon be daylight. I hope he doesn’t mind being knocked up again! Come along, Monsieur le Comte!’
He set off sturdily, ahead of me this time, for the hut. I followed him thankfully. We were here, safe, at our star. It was Valmy now whose alien glimmer showed a crow’s mile away. I spared a last quick glance for that cold point of light. Already it seemed remote, distance-drowned. I would never go there again.
I found my eyes were full of tears. Not one, but a swarm of stars swam in the liquid dis
tance. Angrily, I put up a hand to brush the tears away, and looked again.
Not one, but a swarm of stars.
Three lights now glared from the white bulk that was Valmy. And even as I stared, with the quick hot thrill twisting belly-deep inside me, another window sprang to life, and another. My bedroom, my sitting-room, the schoolroom … and then I saw two tiny lights break from the shadows below and slide away as a car came out of the courtyard. The alarm had been given. Dear God, the alarm had been given. He hadn’t waited till morning. He’d checked on us again, and now Valmy was up. I could almost hear the quick footsteps, the whispering, the whine of the wheelchair, the humming telephone-wires. The bright windows stared with their five eyes across the valley. Then, even as I wondered through my sick panic why he should have roused the place, the lights went out quickly, one by one, and Valmy sank back into quiet. Only the single point of brilliance still showed, and below, the car’s lamps dropped down two quick flickering curves of the zigzag and then vanished as they were switched off.
I’d been wrong. There had been no alarm. He’d found us gone, made sure, and then gone back to wait by his telephone. He had the rest of the night, and his hound was out after us. Bernard, drastically sobered? Raoul?
I turned and ran in under the darkness of the pines, as Philippe’s soft rapping sounded on the door of the hut.
Half a minute went by; three-quarters. I stood beside Philippe, trying to still that little twist of terror deep inside me. In a moment now it would be over; the Englishman’s feet would tread comfortably towards the door; the hinges would creak open; the firelit warmth would push a wedge into the cool night across the verandah floor.
The forest was still. The air breathed cold at my back. A minute; a minute and a half. No sound. He would be still asleep.
‘Shall I knock again?’
‘Yes, Philippe. Harder.’
My nerves jumped and tingled to the sharp rap of knuckles on wood. The sound went through the stillness like the bang of a drum. It seemed to me that it must startle the whole forest awake.
In the backwash of the silence that followed I heard, away below us on the road, the snarl of a car going fast.
There was no sound from the hut.
‘There’s no one in.’ The quiver in the child’s voice – he must be very tired after all – made me pull myself together.
‘He’s sound asleep,’ I said calmly. ‘Let’s see if we can get in. He won’t mind if we wake him.’
Philippe lifted the latch and pushed. A little to my surprise the door opened immediately. He took a step forward, hesitating, but I propelled him gently in front of me straight into the room. The sound of that engine reiterated from the valley was making my skin crawl.
‘Mr. Blake!’ I called softly as I shut the door. ‘Mr. Blake! Are you there?’
Silence met us, the unmistakably hollow silence of an empty house.
I knew from what William had told me that the hut only had one room, with a pent-house scullery at the back. The door which presumably led to this was shut. The room in which we now stood was the living, eating, and sleeping-room of the place.
He could not have been gone long. It didn’t need the memory of the lighted window to prove that he had been there and until quite late. The wood-stove still glowed faintly, and the smell of food hung in the air. He must have been working up here, made himself a meal, and then decided, late as it was, to go down to the Coq Hardi. The blankets on the bed in the corner were neatly folded in a pile.
It was a bare little room, its walls, floor and ceiling all of pine, still, in the heat from the stove, smelling faintly of the forest. There were a sturdy, hand-made table, a couple of wooden chairs, and a hard-looking bed with a box underneath. A small cupboard hung in one corner, and a shelf over the bed held a few books. On pegs near the stove was a miscellany of things – ropes, a rucksack, an old khaki coat. Some spare tools lay beneath on a pile of clean sacking. In the far corner an upright ladder led to a small square trap-door.
‘Can’t we stay here?’ There was the faintest suspicion of a whine in Philippe’s voice; he must be very nearly exhausted, and indeed, the thought of going further appalled me. And where could we go? This must be what the mired fox felt like when it found its way to earth with the last calculated ounce of strength. I glanced at the shut door, at the glowing stove, at Philippe.
‘Yes, of course.’ The car would be raking the road to the Villa Mireille. They would never look for us here. I said: ‘D’you think you could climb that ladder?’
‘That? Yes. What’s up there? Why do we have to go up there?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘there’s only one bed down here, and that’s Mr. Blake’s. He may come back and need it. Besides, we’d be better hidden away up there, don’t you think? Can you keep as still as a mouse if anybody comes in?’
He looked up at me, big eyes in a pinched little face. He was biting his lip. He nodded. I think if Léon de Valmy had come in at that moment I could have killed him with my bare hands. As it was I said briskly: ‘Well, we mustn’t leave any sign we’ve been here, just in case somebody else comes looking for us before Mr. Blake gets home. Are your shoes wet? Ah, yes, they are a bit, aren’t they? So are mine. We’ll take them off – no, stay on the mat, petit – that’s fine. Now, you carry them and perch here by the stove while I reconnoitre the loft.’
Luckily the trap-door was light, and, it seemed, in frequent use. At any rate it opened easily and quietly, and, standing on the ladder with my head and shoulders through the opening, I raked the loft with the beam of Philippe’s torch. I had been praying fervently as I climbed that the place would be not too bad. Now I gave a sigh of relief. The loft was almost as clean as the living-room, and quite dry. It was used as a store-room, and I could see some boxes and canisters, some more rope, a drum of wire, and – what was more to the purpose – a pile of tarpaulins and sacking on the chimney side of the steep-roofed little chamber.
I went quickly down again and reported this to Philippe. ‘It’s beautifully warm,’ I said cheerfully, ‘right over the stove. Can you shove your shoes in your pockets and swarm away up while I collect some blankets? I’ll pass them up to you. I can’t spare the torch for a moment, so don’t explore too far.’
As I had hoped, there were extra blankets in the box under the bed. I dragged these out with wary flashes of the torch, and with some little trouble got them one by one up the ladder and into Philippe’s waiting grasp. At last I pulled myself up beside him, and sent a final beam raking the little room … Nothing betrayed us; the floor was dry, the bed undisturbed, the door shut but not locked …
We shut the trap-door quietly and crawled – only in the centre of the loft could one stand – to make our bed. The warmth from the chimney was pleasant, the blankets thick and comforting; the little dark loft with its steep-pitched roof gave an illusion of safety.
So presently, having shared a stick of chocolate and said our prayers, from both of which exercises we derived immense comfort, we settled down for what remained of the night.
Philippe went to sleep almost immediately, curled in his usual small huddle up against me. I tucked the blankets thankfully round him, and then lay listening to his light breathing, and to the million tiny noises of the large silence that wrapped us in.
The breeze seemed finally to have dropped, for the forest – so close to us lying up under the shingles – was still. Only a faint intermittent murmur, like a long sigh, came from the pines. Inside the cottage came, from time to time, the tiny noises of a building stirring in its sleep; the creak of a settling board, the fall of charred wood in the stove, the tiny scratting of a mouse in the wall. I lay there, trying to empty my mind of worry and speculation about the coming day. It was Wednesday; only the one day to go and then I could deliver my charge, either at the Villa Mireille itself, or, if that proved difficult, by any telephone. The thing was easy. Easy.
And if, as seemed likely, William Blake called at the mountain-hut in t
he morning, then it became easier still. Once we had him as escort the last shred of danger vanished. All I had to do now was relax and try to sleep. Neither Léon de Valmy nor Bernard would think of looking for us here. I had once spoken of ‘William’ to Raoul (the thought brought me momentarily awake again) and he might connect the name – but of course Raoul wasn’t in it. Raoul was in Paris. He had nothing to do with it. We were safe here, quite safe … I could sleep …
The lifting of the door-latch sounded, in that sleepy silence, like a pistol-shot.
Even as one part of my mind stampeded in panic like the mice now scurrying from the sound, the other rose light and dizzy with relief. It was William Blake, of course. It couldn’t be anyone else. I must have slept longer than I’d thought, and now it was early morning, and he had come back.
I lifted my head to listen, but made no other movement. Something else which had nothing whatever to do with my mind and its conclusions kept me clamped down like a hare in her form.
I waited. Philippe slept.
Below us the door shut very softly. The newcomer took two or three steps, then stopped. I could hear him breathing hard, as if he’d been hurrying. He stood perfectly still for a long time. I waited for the homely sounds of a log in the stove, the rasp of a match, the opening of the scullery door, but there was nothing except the stillness, and the rapid breathing. And then there was a pause of complete silence, as even the breathing stopped.
I think mine did too. I knew now it wasn’t William Blake. I knew why he had paused with held breath, standing with ears at the stretch and probably a torch-beam raking the darkness. He had been listening for sounds of the quarry. It couldn’t be true, but it was. The hound was here already.
Then his breath came out again with a gasp, and he moved across the floor.
Now came the quiet chunk of closing shutters, the chink of the lamp-globe, the scrape of a match; but the sounds were about as homely as the click of a cocked gun.