Lord St Vincent! The name slid into his thoughts as Gilbert flipped the reins so that they slapped across the horse's flanks and started it moving. Yes, if Lord St Vincent had not given him, as his first peacetime orders, the task of finding a tiny island off the Brazilian coast and surveying it, he would never have met Sarah. If they had never met they would never have fallen in love and from that it followed they would never have married or be here on a prolonged honeymoon through France. Which, he admitted, was as disgraceful a thought as any man should have so near breakfast.

The country round the château was bleak. Or, rather, it was wild: it had the harsh wildness of parts of Cornwall, the thin layer of soil sprinkled on rock, rugged boulders jutting up as though scattered by an untidy giant. The small houses built of tightly-locked grey stone, some long ago whitewashed, roofed by slates, a small shelter for a horse or donkey, a low wall containing the midden. Life here was a struggle against nature: crops grew not with the wild profusion and vigour of the Tropics - to which he had become accustomed over the past few years - but because men and women hoed and dug and ploughed and weeded from dawn to dusk.

Gilbert became impatient with the horse, a chestnut which looked as though it was not exercised enough and heartily resented being between shafts. Perhaps, Ramage thought sourly, it was a Republican and resented having to work (if jogging along this lane rated the description 'work') for Monarchists.

'Pretend to be asleep - or sleepy, anyway,' Gilbert said as they approached the first village. Ramage inspected it through half-closed eyes, and for a moment was startled how different it was from all the villages he had seen up to now. A few moments later he realized that the village was the same but his attitude had just changed. He had been a free visitor when he had seen all the other villages on the roads from Calais to Paris, south across Orléans and the Bourbonnais, among the hills of Auvergne, and to the northwest up towards Finisterre through Poitou and Anjou ... Towns and villages, Limoges with its superb porcelain and enamels, the fourth-century baptistry of the church near Poitiers which is France's earliest Christian building ... Clermont-Ferrand, where Pope Urban (the second?) sent off the first Crusade in 1095 (why did he remember that date?), the châteaux and palaces along the Loire Valley ... Angers with the château of seventeen towers belonging formerly to the Dukes of Anjou, and no one now willing to discuss the whereabouts of the tapestries, particularly the fourteenth-century one which was more than 430 feet long. And Chinon, on the banks of the Vienne, where Joan of Arc prodded the Dauphin into war. No, all these towns had been impressive and the villages on the long roads between them for the most part interesting (or different, anyway), but they had been at peace - with England, at least.

With England: that, he suddenly realized, was significant, and he wished he could discuss it with Sarah but it had to be talked about in English, not French, and it was too risky talking in English when they could be overheard by a hidden hedger and ditcher.

The French had been at peace with England but not yet with themselves. He had been surprised to see that the enemy for the people of all the villages, towns and cities of France was now their own people: the members of the Committees of Public Safety at the top of a pyramid which spread out to gendarmes enforcing the curfew and standing at the barrières demanding passeports, the old enemies denouncing each other in secret, the banging on doors in the darkness, when no neighbour dared to look to see who the gendarmes were bundling away.

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité - fine words. They had stretched France's frontiers many miles to the north, east and south, but what had they done for the French people? Now every able-bodied young man would have to serve again in the Army or Navy, and there was no harm in that if they were needed to defend France. But France would be attacking other countries: earlier France was everywhere the aggressor, even across the sands of Egypt.

That was looking at the phrase in its broadest sense, yet the picture those three words summoned up for him was simple and one that fitted every place in every city, town and large village in France.

The picture was stark and simple: two weathered baulks of timber arranged as a vertical and parallel frame, and a heavy and angled metal blade, sharpened on the underside, sliding down two grooves. A bench on which the victim was placed so that his or her neck was squarely under the blade, a wicker basket beyond to catch the severed head. Weeping relatives and wildly cheering onlookers - that dreadful melange of blood and hysteria. Of the three words, the guillotine must stand for fraternité and égalité because liberté was represented by the other part of the picture. This was the rusted metal representation of the Tree of Liberty. Usually it was little more than an example of the work of a hasty blacksmith and always it was rusty. And sometimes on the top was placed a red cap of liberty, faded and rotting, rarely recognizable as a copy of the old Phrygian cap.

And the gig had stopped and Gilbert was getting out and saying something in a surly voice, using a tone Ramage had never heard before. Yes, they had arrived at the barrière. It was in fact simply three chairs and a table in the shade of a plane tree on one side of the road. Three gendarmes sat in the chairs and one had called to Gilbert to bring over the documents. Gilbert was carrying not just the canvas wallet but a bottle of wine.

Pretending to be asleep, hat tilted over his face, Ramage watched. Gilbert took out the papers - leaving the bottle on his side of the table, as though putting it there to leave his hands free - and handed them to the gendarme, who still sat back in his chair and gestured crossly when Gilbert first placed the papers on the table. To pick them up the gendarme would have to lean forward, and this he was reluctant to do. Gilbert put the documents in the man's hand, and the gendarme glanced through them, obviously counting. He then looked across at the gig and handed the papers back, holding his hand out for the bottle.

Gilbert walked back to the gig, resumed his seat, slapped the reins across the horse's rump and the gig continued its slow journey towards Brest. The other two gendarmes, Ramage noticed, had never opened their eyes.

Beyond the village, Gilbert turned. 'You saw all that - obviously they are not looking for any escapers. That is the routine, though: two sleep while the other reaches out a hand.'

'So our papers are not -'

The thud of horses' hooves behind them brought the sudden command from Gilbert: 'Don't look round - mounted gendarmes. Pretend to be asleep!'

A moment later two horsemen cut in from the left side, then two more passed on the right and reined their horses to a stop, blocking the narrow road.

'Papers!' one of the men demanded, holding out his hand.

'Papers, papers, papers,' Gilbert grumbled. 'We have only just showed them back there, now the four horsemen of the Apocalypse want to look at them again...'

One of the gendarmes grinned and winked at Sarah. 'We like to check up on pretty girls on a sunny morning - where are you going, mademoiselle?'

'Madame,' Sarah said sleepily. 'To Brest with my husband.'

Her accent and the tone of voice was perfect, Ramage realized. The gendarme was flirting; she was the virtuous wife.

The gendarme looked through the papers. 'Ah, Citizeness Ribère, born twenty-two years ago in Falaise. You look younger - marriage must suit you.' He looked at Ramage. 'Citizen Ribère? Off to Brest to buy your wife some pretty ribbons, eh?'

'Potatoes and cabbages, and rice if there is any,' Ramage said with glum seriousness. 'No ribbons.'