The elf-like Estelle squared up to her boldly. ‘Put a sock in it, Cecily!’ she said. ‘You’re spreading panic. It’s unfair on Dorcas to greet her with such rubbish. And anyhow—when Orlando says “local” he’s spot on! The drawbridge was up. No one could have got in here from outside after dark, you know that. It’s one of us who’s responsible. He’s probably listening to your hysterical squawks right now and laughing at you. Or we could listen to Guy—it’s most likely one of the live-in staff going on a drunken rampage. No more than that. I’m sure Guy will tell us when he’s discovered his—or their—identity.’

‘Orlando?’ said Joe, faintly. ‘Would you care to enlarge? I’m all ears.’

‘Better tell him, Pa,’ urged Dorcas. ‘He wouldn’t want to leave me anywhere Vandal-infested, you know.’

‘Oh, all right,’ said Orlando heavily. ‘I do so hate a fuss but … it was really rather disquieting …’

Jeers, hisses and stamping feet urged him to recast his phrases. ‘Very well—it was dashed upsetting! We’re all agreed on that. Who was it who found her? Padraic? Padraic joined us last week on his way through Provence. Would you care to tell Joe what you discovered?’

A slender man got to his feet and the party fell silent. He had the Irish good looks to go with his name: black hair flopping over his forehead, misty blue eyes and an air of melancholy. The voice that accompanied this romantic outward appearance, though soft, had the resonance of a tenor bell and every word was clear.

‘Padraic Connell, Commander. Writer, traveller, song-collector and, when I can no longer fight off the urge, second-rate poet.’

Good Lord! The man even had that self-disparaging, lop-sided smile that women fell for. Joe glanced sideways to check its effect on Estelle and saw that both she and Dorcas were caught on the hook of his charm. Wide-eyed, mouths ever-so-slightly open, they were eager to hear more. Even the finches at the far end had fallen silent.

‘It was two days ago I made the heart-rending discovery.’

Chapter Five

‘I was going into the chapel to inspect the medieval fabric: the stones, the statues, the inscriptions—I’d been promised wonders. I’ve a fascination with the Courts of Love which were held in the castles hereabouts. You’ll have heard of the Courts of Love, Commander?’

Joe didn’t confide that he’d encountered the notion only two hours before in a guidebook. He nodded silently, not wishing to interrupt the man’s flow.

‘Well, I’m wandering through this blessed land of Provence in the tracks of these lords and ladies who presided over the birth of a concept so essentially a part of our humanity we are living by it today. I speak of Romantic Love.’ He looked heavenwards for a second while he questioned himself. ‘Now was it the birth or was it simply the acknowledgement of an ideal of love which already existed? An ideal which transcended the boredom and the distasteful duties of noble wedlock?

‘Wedlock! The word itself snaps like manacles! In a time of arranged marriages and religious demands it pleased the ladies of the day to turn the phrase “God is Love” on its head. For many “Love is God” drew a warmer response.’ His glance wafted lightly around the table, touching the women with a complicitous and forgiving unction. ‘A wife was her husband’s chattel but she could be queen of her lover’s heart.’

Joe noted that the men in the audience—with one exception—were staring in disapproval or discomfort at their plates. The women were melting, intrigued. Even Dorcas seemed to be well adrift.

‘All over this fair land of Provence, from citadel to citadel they reigned, these clever beauties, patronesses of the arts, spinners of the bright thread of romance which lives on and spells out their names in letters of gold: Stéphanette, Cécile, Blanchefleur, Aliénore, Elys …’

Having tasted the silver syllables, he surged into an explosion of the ancient Provençal tongue, its muscled certainty celebrating its stout Roman roots:

‘Ah! Mounte soun le beu Troubaire

Mestre d’amour!

‘Where is he, the handsome troubadour, past master of love? Where indeed may I find my troubadours, the wandering musicians who enchanted with music and song? I’m trailing them in the hope they will lead me to a queen. A queen of both England and France. A woman who was as clever as she was beautiful: Eleanor of Aquitaine. The wife of kings, the mother of kings, the daughter of a prince. I feel sure my heroine—for so she is, and I don’t blush to declare it—must at one time have arrived here to preside over the revelries. Perhaps she even sat at this table, right there in the place which a beauty of our own day now graces.’ He paused to lift his claret glass to toast a simpering blonde who dimpled and squirmed to find herself unexpectedly the centre of attention.

The Irishman was taking longer to come to the boil than Orlando, but Joe noted his audience had settled to listen to the hypnotic voice with the wide-eyed anticipation of children turning the last page of a favourite bedtime story. They knew the ending but were enjoying travelling with him towards it. And the whole performance was being put on for Joe’s benefit after all. He assumed a more receptive expression.

‘Here, at Silmont, I felt I was drawing closer, entering her world. I had a tryst in the chapel, not with Eleanor herself, but with one almost as well known—her contemporary and namesake: Aliénore. A noble lady whose legendary beauty had drawn me across the breadth of France.

‘Aliénore … And there she was—or rather, there she had ceased to be.’

The handsome features creased in pain for a heartbeat.

‘It’s Keats who expresses the deepest emotions in the fewest words, don’t you find? Knowing something of the lady I was about to see and afire with anticipation, my thoughts were captured by two lines of his:

‘Thou still unravished bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time …

‘Well, that holy place was steeped in silence and the air was heavy with the slow passage of many centuries, but the bride …’ The honeyed flow faltered and resumed, spiked with bitterness: ‘Ah, the bride I was to find was no longer unravished, poor creature! She had been hacked to pieces by a barbarous hand.’

Chapter Six

Joe had heard enough.

He was conscious that in the stillness that followed this sorrowful announcement all eyes had slid over to him, watching for his reaction. That most irritating of challenges—‘So there! What do you make of that, Mr Policeman?’—even when silently delivered, always drew an off-key response from Joe.

He leaned back and offered the Irishman a sympathetic grin. ‘Commiserations, old chap! So you never got to fix a ceremonial smacker on those famous lips? I understand that’s the tradition in these parts? My guidebook assures me,’ he patted his pocket, ‘that the carving in question is such a lifelike image and so remarkably lovely that no man can restrain himself from leaning over her and planting a kiss. Table-top tomb, I understand? A double effigy? The Lady Aliénore, dead as a doornail, toes turned up, alongside her crusading warrior lord? The question is: would I have had the temerity to wanton with his wife under the old boy’s bristling gaze? I think I’d have had to drape a handkerchief over his face first. But many are less fastidious, I believe. To the extent that there was some concern over the erosion of the stone?’

His unemphatic question was heard with the sullen silence and offended stares that greet any child who has flippantly raised a doubt over the existence of Father Christmas.