coach, their confidence already heightened with bloodlust, were armed with sticks, poles and spades and anything else that constituted a weapon.
‘What is it? What do they want? Why have they stopped us?’ Maria asked in alarm.
Charles looked at her. In the glow from the carriage lamps her face was white, her eyes enormous but quite steady. ‘No doubt we’ll find out soon enough.’ His eyes were anxious and alert, but his voice was neither. He spoke to Maria in an entirely matter-of-fact tone that somehow carried complete conviction. ‘Whatever happens, trust me. Unless they order you to get out, stay in the coach. We’ll get out of this.’
‘I wish I had your confidence,’ she murmured fearfully, her eyes on the ever-increasing rabble.
Charles did not answer. It was as if she was not there. He was watching the men saunter towards them. There was an odd, still look on his face. His eyes narrowed suddenly. The abstraction left them and his hand closed round the butt of his pistol on the seat beside him, concealed by a fold in his coat, and Maria, watching him, as she always watched him when he wasn’t looking at her, was all at once aware that behind that casual gesture his nerves were tense and alert, as if he were waiting for something to happen.
The leader of this band of unsavoury, hostile peasants was a man in a green-caped coat, his complexion the colour of ivory. His hatchet face with the thin lips and heavy, drooping eyelids was a curious mixture of alertness and perturbability. The chin that rested on the abundant folds of his untidy and soiled neckcloth was long and resolute. He peered inside with a somewhat suspicious glance at the coach’s inhabitants.
‘What is this?’ Charles asked calmly. ‘We have done you no harm and most certainly intend none.’
‘Well, now,’ the man drawled. ‘It’s simple enough. We’ve got no reason to see you and your lady—uncomfortable, but we’ve got no reason to trust you either.’ He squinted one eye at Charles. ‘Why, I don’t know you—not at all.’
‘It is a simple enough problem to cure,’ Charles returned. ‘Duval’s the name. Charles Duval. I am of the people—of peasant stock on both sides.’
‘But now you walk and talk like a swank.’
‘I’ve bettered myself, I admit. Do you find something wrong with that?’
The man nodded slowly, without taking his eyes off the stranger. ‘No—I was right. I don’t know you.’
‘The fire? Whose house is it?’ Charles asked, appearing coolly unruffled by the interruption to their journey and the threat this band of miscreants posed to their safety.
‘The house of the Seigneur,’ the man growled. ‘And the Seigneur is feeding the flames this very minute.’
Apart from a darkening of his face, Charles was careful not to show the horror and revulsion he felt. ‘What precisely did he do?’
‘What’s it to you?’ he snarled. ‘But I’ll tell you if you want to know. That rich bloodsucker said that a man with a family could live on ten sous a day. That’s never right, don’t you agree, eh?’
Charles shrugged. ‘What is that to me? I’m a stranger in these parts. I was not acquainted with your Seigneur, but he sounds just like any other I have come across.’
The hatchet face thrust itself further into the coach. ‘Are you sure he’s not a friend of yours?’ He turned and roared, ‘Look, boys! I don’t think we can trust this man who calls himself one of the people.’
Obscenities were loudly uttered and sticks were raised, and, before the echo of their shouts had died away, to Maria’s horror Charles opened the door and climbed out, the pistol he held concealed in the folds of his coat. Taken unawares, the crowd backed away. Charles stood before them, smiling his icy smile.
‘You’re the leader of this rabble, are you?’ he said quietly, addressing himself to the hatchet-faced man.
The man hesitated. ‘I might be.’
Charles started walking straight towards him. The rabble were at the man’s back. The crude weapons wavered. This was unusual. They were not prepared for this. Nothing in their experience had prepared them to deal with a man who wouldn’t turn and run when confronted.
Pierre had scrambled down from his seat and stood close to the window. ‘Savages,’ he murmured, just loud enough for Maria to hear. ‘Savages, the lot of them, that’s what they are. The devil’s own. God save us.’
Pierre voiced Maria’s own apprehension. The horses were uneasy, their eyes alert, ears pricked and tremulous tails.
That was the moment when Charles took positive action. When he was close enough his hand shot out and he caught the leader by the coat front. Then his arm stiffened and he shoved the man backwards to crash into his comrades. The impact knocked several of them down into the dirt. They got to their feet, shouting and cursing, only to stare straight into the muzzle of Charles’s pistol. The mob had no stomach for gunfire.
‘A man’s a fool to wander through France unarmed today,’ Charles said, hoping it would discourage these madmen from inflicting harm and allowing the incident to degenerate into wholesale brigandage, as it threatened to do.
Inside the coach Maria watched the whole terrifying proceedings, the howling of the village’s inhabitants loud in her ears. An odd shiver tingled down her spine at the sound and she set her teeth and tried to shut her ears.
Until that moment she had admired Charles’s utmost forbearance in his dealing with the crowd, but she uttered a gasp of horror when she saw him brandish the pistol. Knowing that one man armed with a pistol didn’t stand a chance of surviving against an angry mob, thinking quickly, inspiration struck. Opening her reticule, she pulled out a small pot of rouge.
Shrouded in her cloak, her hood pulled well over her head and holding it together so that only her eyes showed, she opened the door and climbed out. All eyes except Charles’s became focused on her, but he knew she was there and silently cursed her idiocy for disobeying him.
Moving closer to Charles, Maria could almost feel the effort he was exerting to keep his rage under control. She knew that relaxed, almost indolent stance of his was only a surface calm, beneath which was a murderous fury which he would no doubt unleash on her later.
She was numb to every emotion save a gnawing fear that feasted heartily upon what courage she could muster. She set her mind not to appear frightened beneath the hideous stares and bold leers that were directed at her, yet her knees had a strange tendency to shake beneath her. Despite her show of self-control, she was desperately afraid, not knowing what lay in store for them, but convinced now that the miscreants planned some hideous fate.
Disconcertedly she moved her gaze to Charles. His dark hair was stirred by the light breeze. Standing stiff and appearing to be in complete control of his actions, he seemed like a stranger, a man she did not know, distant, frowning.
Suddenly a bearded rough standing to one side of the leader nudged his neighbour with his elbow.
‘Nice, isn’t she?’ he said. ‘But I’d like to see more of her, eh?’
‘Lends a bit of a swank to our company,’ said another.
Another ill-favoured, toothless individual shrilled his assent
