“You must not say such things. You have been so brave.”

“Brave? I? Crouching in my prison … shutting myself away … afraid to see anyone … living like a hermit! You call that brave?”

I said: “It is brave in a way.”

She laughed. “No, it is cowardice. I was always a coward. Afraid of life. I never grasped firmly as your mother did. Perhaps I should have married Charles. He would have married me. Gentleman’s honour, you understand. I knew that he did not want me. I suspected even before the accident that it was your mother whom he wanted. I could have made him marry me. Perhaps I should have done so. I might have had children. After all, it was an obligation on his part. How different everything might have been if I had married him! Sometimes one has a choice in life. Two ways loom before one. Which should one take? And the decision makes all the difference to one’s life.”

I was thoughtful. Was that not what Leah, the gypsy, had said to me?

I sat there thinking of Aunt Sophie’s decision. Which would I have taken had I been in her place?

There was silence for a while, then Aunt Sophie said: “Jessica, I sometimes feel there is no reason why I should go on. It would be so easy to let go …”

I said: “Tamarisk will come back. I feel it in my bones.”

She shook her head. “I shall never see Tamarisk again.”

There was nothing I could say or do to comfort her. I kissed her forehead and took my leave.

The weeks were passing. There was no news of Tamarisk. My father had done everything possible to trace the gypsies, but there was no sign of them. Enquiries were made and it was learned that they had not visited their usual haunts that year.

There were whole days when no one mentioned Tamarisk which was a sign that we were all beginning to accept the evidence that she had gone with the gypsies. She was not, after all, related to us. My father said: “The child is merely Dolly Mather’s bastard by a wandering gypsy. If it wasn’t for Sophie’s preoccupation with her it would be no concern of ours that she is taken back to her father’s people. It might be said that they have more right to her than Sophie.”

I tried to explain to him what Tamarisk had meant to Sophie, but my father was apt to be impatient of the weaknesses of others. The only two people he cared about were my mother and myself. He had a certain pride in David who was a model son and as unlike Dickon as a son could be from his father. He regretted the death of Jonathan; he had a fondness for Claudine and for Amaryllis. But they were immediate family. Outside that he had little concern. So he shrugged his shoulders. Tamarisk had gone and that was the end of the matter for him.

How different was my mother. She was warm-hearted, making other people’s troubles her concern; and particularly so in the case of Aunt Sophie, for whom she always had had this very special obligation to help.

Aunt Sophie was shrinking into a decline. She seemed to have shrivelled; she was constantly talking of Tamarisk, and Jeanne told me that she had gone into her room at midnight to find her at the window looking out because she had thought she heard someone in the garden and wondered if Tamarisk had come home.

The talk at Eversleigh now was all about Napoleon’s advance on Russia. My mother always listened eagerly to news of the war. She was longing for the day when it would be over and she would be reunited with Charlot.

There was no fresh news about him but since she had heard that he and Louis Charles had a vineyard in Burgundy, she had been hopeful. She confided in me that it had been heart-rending when she had believed he was fighting in Napoleon’s army. “Fighting against us,” she said. “It seemed so terrible. Now I can think of him in his vineyard. He will find that so interesting. And Louis Charles with him. He was always his shadow. I wonder what his wife is like. I might have grandchildren. It is maddening to be in the dark. But I must thank God that he is safe.”

She did not try to bring a halt to the conversation at the table when it was about the war now as she had done in the past. She encouraged it, listening avidly for some indication that there might be peace.

My father watched events with great interest. He said that if Napoleon succeeded in conquering Russia the whole of Europe would be in his hands.

“Then,” he went on, “he would turn his attention to us.”

“But there is the sea to protect us,” said my mother.

“If he could find a way of bringing his armies over …”

“The Navy would never allow it.”

“If he does succeed in conquering Russia,” said David, “he will believe he cannot fail.”

“He failed at Trafalgar,” pointed out Claudine.

“And by God, he is going to fail again,” added my father. “But at the moment the Russians are in full retreat. Napoleon is after Moscow. If he succeeds in taking it the Russians will lose heart.”

“Will that be the end of the war?” asked my mother.

“My dear Lottie, what do you think the mighty conqueror of Europe will do if he beats the Russians? He will have come to the conclusion that he is invincible. Nothing will deter him from an attack on our island.”

My mother shivered. “It is all so stupid, so pointless. What does it matter to the people who is king or emperor?”

“Unfortunately, my love, it matters to the kings and most certainly to this particular emperor. Napoleon wants to see himself astride the world.”

“He will never conquer us,” said David firmly.

“Never!” agreed my father. “But there might be certain troubles to be faced first.”

We visited Aunt Sophie regularly. Sometimes I went; sometimes Amaryllis did. Always Sophie talked of Tamarisk, her beauty, her charm. I said to Amaryllis: “She is fast turning the child into an angel of virtue.” And she agreed.

Jeanne was very worried. “She eats scarcely anything; and does not rest at night. Often I hear her moving about. I went in last night. She was sitting at the window looking out. She said she thought she had heard Tamarisk in the garden, calling to her. She was icily cold. I got her back to bed and although I covered her with several blankets she lay there shivering for a full hour. She can’t go on like this.”

“I wish we could get some news of Tamarisk,” I said.

It was a balmy September day when we heard that Napoleon had entered Moscow.

“This is the end,” said David. “The effect of Moscow’s surrender will be devastating for the Russian army. It will collapse.”

David was a shrewd observer of the political field, I had always thought. He approached all subjects with logic. My father was apt to have preconceived notions and a certain amount of emotion crept into his judgements.

But for once David was wrong. We waited for news with the utmost eagerness. Moscow was burning. It was first thought that the French had set fire to it; but that would have been folly. Napoleon did not want a destroyed city. He had his army to house and feed. It was a last desperate manoeuvre by the Russians—an example of what they called the scorched earth policy. They had tried it out consistently during the war and Napoleon’s advancing armies, far from home, found nothing ahead of them but burning towns.

“He has to make a decision now,” said David. “To stay the winter in a burned-out city or to withdraw. He is hesitating. If he waits much longer it will be too late.”

“What we must pray for now is his retreat from Moscow and an early Russian winter,” said my father. “That will be better than an avenging army.”

“Those poor soldiers,” murmured my mother, and I knew she was giving up a prayer of thanksgiving because Charlot was no longer one of Napoleon’s soldiers, but snug, she hoped, in his vineyard.

“Those poor soldiers, Lottie,” retorted my father, “are the very gentlemen who would be over-running this land and bringing their accursed emperor here to rule over us.”