Caravan to Vaccares

Le Grand Duc looked in no way perturbed, far less startled. He merely frowned in ducal annoyance and completed a move.

‘Can’t you see we’re busy?’ He turned to Lila who was staring at Bowman with parted lips and very large rounded eyes. ‘Careful, my dear, careful. Your bishop is in great danger.’ He spared Bowman a cursory glance, viewing him with distaste. ‘Who are after you?’

‘The gypsies, that’s who. Look!’ Bowman rolled up his left sleeve. ‘They’ve knifed me!’

The expression of distaste deepened.

‘You must have given them some cause for offence.’

‘Well, I was down there – ’

‘Enough!’ He held up a magisterial hand. ‘Peeping Toms can expect no sympathy from me. Leave at once.’

‘Leave at once? But they’ll get me – ’

‘My dear.’ Bowman didn’t think Le Grand Duc was addressing him and he wasn’t. He patted Lila’s knee in a proprietorial fashion. ‘Excuse me while I call the management. No cause for alarm, I assure you.’

Bowman ran out through the doorway, checked briefly to see if the terrace was still deserted. Le Grand Duc called: ‘You might close that door after you.’

‘But, Charles –’ That was Lila.

‘Checkmate,’ said Le Grand Duc firmly, ‘in two moves.’

There was the sound of footsteps, running footsteps, coming across the patio to the base of the terrace steps. Bowman moved quickly to the nearest port in the storm.

Cecile wasn’t asleep either. She was sitting up in bed holding a magazine and attired in some fetching negligée that, in happier circumstances, might well have occasioned admiring comment. She opened her mouth, whether in astonishment or the beginning of a shout for help, then closed it again and listened with surprising calmness as Bowman stood there with his back to the closed door and told her his story.

‘You’re making all this up,’ she said.

Bowman hoisted his left sleeve again, an action which by now he didn’t much like doing as the coagulating blood was beginning to stick wound and material together.

‘Including this?’ Bowman asked.

She made a face. ‘It is nasty. But why should they – ’

‘Ssh!’ Bowman had caught the sound of voices outside, voices which rapidly became very loud. An altercation was taking place and Bowman had little doubt that it concerned him. He turned the handle of the door and peered out through a crack not much more than an inch in width.

Le Grand Duc, with Lila watching from the open doorway, was standing there with arms outspread like an overweight traffic policeman, barring the way of Ferenc, Koscis and Hoval. That they weren’t immediately recognizable as those three was due to the fact that they’d obviously considered it prudent to take time out to wrap some dirty handkerchiefs or other pieces of cloth about their faces in primitive but effective forms of masks, which explained why Bowman had been given the very brief breathing space he had been.

‘This is private property for guests only,’ Le Grand Duc said sternly.

‘Stand aside!’ Ferenc ordered.

‘Stand aside? I am the Duc de Croytor – ’

‘You’ll be the dead Duc de – ’

‘How dare you, sir!’ Le Grand Duc stepped forward with a speed and coordination surprising in a man of his bulk and caught the astonished and completely unprepared Ferenc with a roundhouse right to the chin. Ferenc staggered back into the arms of his companions who had momentarily to support him to prevent his collapse. There was some moments’ hesitation, then they turned and ran from the terrace, Koscis and Hoval still having to support a very wobbly Ferenc.

‘Charles.’ Lila had her hands clasped in what is alleged to be the classic feminine gesture of admiration. ‘How brave of you!’

‘A bagatelle. Aristocracy versus ruffians – class always tells.’ He gestured towards his doorway. ‘Come, we have yet to finish both the chess and the canapés.’

‘But – but how can you be so calm? I mean, aren’t you going to phone? The management? Or the police?’

‘What point? They were masked and will be far away by this time. After you.’

They went inside and closed their door. Bowman closed his.

‘You heard?’ She nodded. ‘Good old duke. That’s taken the heat off for the moment.’ He reached for the door handle. ‘Well, thanks for the sanctuary.’

‘Where are you going?’ She seemed troubled or disappointed or both.

‘Over the hills and far away.’

‘In your car?’

‘I haven’t got one.’

‘You can take mine. Ours, I mean.’

‘You mean that?’

‘Of course, silly.’

‘You’re going to make me a very happy man one day. But for the car, some other time. Good night.’

Bowman closed her door behind him and was almost at his own room when he stopped. Three figures had emerged from the shadows.

‘First you, my friend.’ Ferenc’s voice was no more than a whisper, maybe the idea of disturbing the Duke again didn’t appeal to him. ‘Then we attend to the little lady.’

Bowman was three paces from his own door and he had taken the first even before Ferenc had stopped talking – people generally assume that you will courteously hear them out – and had taken the third before they had moved, probably because the other two were waiting for the lead from Ferenc and Ferenc’s reactions were temporarily out of kilter since his brief encounter with Le Grand Duc. In any event, Bowman had the door shut behind him before Ferenc’s shoulder hit in and had the key turned before Ferenc could twist the door handle from his grip.

He spent no time on brow-mopping and self congratulation but ran to the back of the apartment, opened the window and looked out. The branches of a sufficiently stout tree were less than six feet away. Bowman withdrew his head and listened. Someone was giving the door handle a good going over, then abruptly the sound ceased to be replaced by that of running footsteps. Bowman waited no longer: if there was one thing that had been learnt from dealing with those men it was that procrastination was uninsurable.

As a piece of arboreal trapeze work there was little enough to it. He just stood on the sill, half-leaned and half-fell outwards, caught a thick branch, swung into the bole of the tree and slid to the ground. He scrambled up the steep bank leading to the road that encircled the hotel from the rear. At the top he heard a low and excited call behind him and twisted round. The moon was out again and he could clearly see the three of them starting to climb the bank: it was equally clear that the knives they held in their hands weren’t impeding their progress at all.

Before Bowman lay the choice of running downhill or up. Downhill from the Baumanière lay open country, uphill lay Les Baux with its winding streets and back-alleys and labyrinth of shattered ruins. Bowman didn’t hesitate. As one famous heavyweight boxer said of his opponents – this was after he had lured the unfortunates into the ring – ‘they can run but they can’t hide.’ In Les Baux Bowman could both run and hide. He turned uphill.

He ran up the winding road towards the old village as quickly as the steepness, his wind and the state of his legs would permit. He hadn’t indulged in this sort of thing in years. He spared a glance over his shoulder. Neither, apparently, had the three gypsies. They hadn’t gained any that Bowman could see: but they hadn’t lost any either, maybe they were just pacing themselves for what they might consider to be a long run that lay ahead: if that were the case, Bowman thought, he might as well stop running now.

The straight stretch of road leading to the entrance to the village was lined with car parks on both sides but there were no cars there and so no place to hide. He passed on through the entrance.

After about another hundred yards of what had already become this gasping lung-heaving run Bowman came to a fork in the road. The fork on the right curved down to the battlemented walls of the village and had every appearance of leading to a cul-de-sac. The one to the left, narrow and winding and very steep, curved upwards out of sight and while he dreaded the prospect of any more of that uphill marathon it seemed to offer the better chance of safety so he took it. He looked behind again and saw that his momentary indecision had enabled his pursuers to make up quite a bit of ground on him. Still running in this same unnerving silence, the knives in their hands glinting rhythmically as their arms pumped to and fro, they were now less than thirty yards distant.

At the best speed he could, Bowman continued up this narrow winding road. He slowed down occasionally to peer briefly and rather desperately into various attractive dark openings on both sides, but mainly to the right, but he knew it was his labouring lungs and leaden legs that told him that those entrances were inviting, his reason told him that those attractions were almost certainly fatal illusions, leading to cul-de-sacs or some other form of trap from which there could be no escape.

And now, for the first time, Bowman could hear behind him the hoarse and rasping breathing of the gypsies. They were clearly in as bad shape as he was himself but when he glanced over his shoulder he realized this was hardly cause for any wild rejoicing, he was hearing them now simply because they were that much closer than they had been: their mouths were open in gasping exertion, their faces contorted by effort and sheened in sweat and they stumbled occasionally as their weakening legs betrayed them on the unsure footing of the cobblestones. But now they were only fifteen yards away, the price Bowman had paid for his frequent examinations of possible places of refuge. But at least their nearness made one decision inevitable for him: there was no point in wasting any further time in searching for hiding-places on either side for wherever he went they were bound to see him go and follow. For him now the only hope of life lay among the shattered ruins of the ancient fortress of Les Baux itself.