There was positively nothing he could see to make him nervous, and the children's voices grew fainter as their ball drew them away into the country, so he sauntered from one side of the gateway to the other, recalling the cold summer wind on the garage forecourt in Sussex, opposite Genghis Khan's church.
The van arrived five minutes later, drawing in close beside the left-hand bastion of the gateway.
Still remembering Sussex, Roche watched it half-hopefully, half-fearfully, out of the corner of his eye, only to have his half-hopes swiftly dashed as its occupants unloaded boxes of fresh peaches from the rear, each carrying an armful through the gateway into the town, with no more than the typical glance at him which the working peasant reserved for the idle dummy5
foreign tourist, of boredom lightly iced with envy.
Five more minutes dragged by, then the two men returned to exchange empty boxes for fresh ones. Roche's half-fears began to strengthen at their inconvenient presence, which must surely account for the delay in Genghis Khan's appearance. At the best of times the moment of contact was charged with doubt and uncertainty, but here in the open, with miles of countryside below him and a hundred upper-storey windows watching him over the old wall, the dangers were multiplied.
He turned away from them to scan the street again, aware of a prickle of sweat under his shirt which was not caused by the sun's warmth on his back. But this time, as he moved to give them a wider berth, the elder of the two peasants detoured to pass round him, his face half-obscured by the peach-boxes.
"The van," half the mouth whispered.
Beneath the three-quarter rolled-up canvas flap at the back, the interior of the van looked hot and dark, and still full of peach-boxes. Several wasps were already buzzing above the lowered tail-board, attracted by the scent of the peaches and working up their courage to leave the safety of the sunlight.
"Look away—don't look in here," said Genghis Khan's voice out of the boxes and the darkness. "Look towards the country."
Roche looked away quickly, down the Cahors road and over dummy5
the children, to the fields which the medieval Neuvillians had once tilled when they had been frontier farmers.
"If you can hear me, don't nod—just say so. You understand?" Roche almost nodded. Every night they had returned to the security of their walls, those old farmers, like the earliest colonists of the Americas. That was how bastides worked.
"Yes," he addressed the fields. He hadn't realised until now how deliberately the place had been sited; but, of course, Alphonse de Poitiers had taken the high ground for his new town, like any good commander.
"From time to time, walk away, as though you are still waiting for someone . . . And if you see anything you don't like, walk away and don't come back. You understand?"
Again Roche very nearly nodded. It was an unnatural way of conversing, almost like talking to an incubus within him, which was whispering inside his head.
"Yes." With an effort of will he drove out the dark thought, to join Alphonse de Poitiers. "I understand."
"Then listen. We know now where Audley's money comes from—"
"So do I. He wrote Princess in the Sunset," interrupted Roche quickly. Another advantage was that the memory of that face was less daunting than the actual sight of it: he had to envisage Genghis Khan as he was now— imprisoned in sweaty peach-sweet darkness, with wasps buzzing around his dummy5
ears, not as the descendant of the Mongols and the out-rider of the next race' of conquerors.
"He told you?"
"No." Better to think of the man in there as a Hun than a Mongoclass="underline" Audley's Aëtius, the Last of the Romans, and his half-civilised Visigothic allies had beaten them not far from here fifteen hundred years back. So it could be done—it wasn't impossible if he kept his head.
"What?" The sound of a slight movement inside the van, above the wasp-buzz, encouraged Roche.
"I said 'no'—he didn't tell me. He doesn't want anyone to know he's Antonia Palfrey. It wouldn't do his image as a serious historian any good . . . among the serious historians."
Roche smiled at the fields of Neuville as he thought of what Dr Bodger would make of Antonia Audley. In any last resort there was a weapon to hand there.
But not a weapon to use against Genghis Khan. "What's more, he's writing another novel—he's writing two books, actually: there's a novel about the Vandals in the 5th century, which I think he's finished . . . and there's a history of the Arab invasion of these parts in the 8th century. Which is why he's here now—" the weapon he needed for Genghis Khan fitted snugly into his hand "—all of which I think Colonel Clinton and Sir Eustace Avery already know. . . among other things," he lowered his voice deliberately, to make it more difficult for Genghis Khan to hear, for tactical reasons as well as pure sadism.
dummy5
"What? Clinton knows?" The surprise in the muffled voice was balm to Roche's soul. The thing was working—Genghis Khan could be tweaked into a human reaction, he wasn't invincible: Aëtius, when he saw the sun shimmer on the lance-points of the Gothic army coming to his aid must have felt like this!
"He didn't want to make it too easy for me. It's a test for me
—" Caution quickly counter-balanced confidence: it was Steffy about whom he needed to know, not the source of Audley's wealth "—at least, it was until things started going wrong, anyway."
"Too easy?" To Roche's disappointment, Genghis Khan shrugged aside things going wrong. "Why too easy?"
"Audley wants to come back, he only had to be asked in the right way. I think Clinton knew that—that was never the real thing they were after." He weakened slightly, remembering Genghis Khan's interpretation of the assignment. "You were right there."
"You are sure about Audley?" Genghis Khan also brushed off the olive branch.
"Of course I'm sure." Nothing less than certainty would do for Genghis Khan, even if nothing would ever be certain about David Audley.
Only wasp-buzzing came from the darkness and peach-boxes. It was high time to walk away, and make like a tourist waiting for his girl-friend, but he couldn't leave it at that dummy5
now, he had to qualify it somehow.
"That's my reading of him, anyway. I'd need much more time to tie it up—and professional advice. But we haven't got any more time," he snapped.
"But you are prepared to stake your life on it?"
So that was what he was doing: One must always risk one's life, or one's soul, or one's peace— or some little thing!
"I know he's bloody bored, and that's a fact!" said Roche bitterly, from the heart.
"Bored? "The incubus-voice relaxed. "Ah, yes! Bored. . ."
Roche sensed that he had to keep the initiative. "But what I want to know is ... what happened to Meriel Stephanides," he snapped at the bastide- fields.
"Where is she now?" There was a harsh edge to Genghis Khan's voice. "Have you lost track of her?"
He didn't know about Steffy! The realisation jolted Roche that the Comrades were as criminally incompetent as the British.
"She's dead, damn it!" He needed time to think, and there was one very simple and overdue way of taking it.
He moved away from the van, towards the bastion on the far side of the arched gateway. The street was still empty, and the dog had got the children's ball at last, with which it was joyfully baiting them as they screamed at him to give it back.
Just an accident after all? Or if not an accident, and not the dummy5