Fallen Angels. Bernard Cornwell

pretended indignation. ‘I was a most loved bishop! I used to preach a very good sermon in which I would terrify a parish into making their confessions. I would then listen in the confessional and make a note of which ladies had committed adultery. Then, if they were very pretty, I would visit them and compound the offence, though with instant forgiveness, of course.’ He laughed at her expression.

      Turning Achilles d’Auxigny into a priest had been his father’s ambition. Achilles’ father had been known in France as the Mad Duke. He had believed himself to be God and, for his own worship, he had built a shrine at his Chateau of Auxigny in which, by careful mechanical contrivances, he would perform miracles. Undoubtedly the Mad Duke had hoped that his youngest son would preach the family gospel. Instead, as Achilles was fond of saying, his father had thought of himself as God and taught his children thereby that there was none. Now he looked at his niece. ‘I always told your father not to marry into our family. We’re all quite mad.’

      ‘You’re not.’

      He shrugged as if he did not care to argue the point. ‘I just made my farewells to your father. Everyone says you did a remarkably fine thing with his leg.’

      ‘I just sewed it up, uncle.’

      ‘Just sewed it up, indeed! I couldn’t have done it. I would have fainted.’

      She laughed. She made him walk with her towards the ornamental lake. He complained that it would rain, that he had neither hat, umbrella, cloak or gloves, but consented to accompany her.

      ‘I do hope Lucille can take to your English ways,’ he said dubiously. ‘Horses and walking. It’s most uncivilized.’

      ‘She’ll be too busy having babies,’ Campion said. Her brother would be coming with his bride within the week. ‘Lots of babies.’

      ‘How utterly dreadful. I do hate babies.’

      She laughed, refusing to believe him. Achilles d’Auxigny watched her as they walked. She was, he thought, the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. His sister had been beautiful, but in marrying the fifth Earl of Lazen, his sister had created this extraordinary girl, hair as gold as pale wheat, eyes the colour of the Virgin’s dress, a face of strong lines, softened by the mouth and by an indefinable air of goodness that she carried quite unconsciously. She had, her uncle thought, the clearest skin he had ever seen, eyes that shone with happiness; she was a girl of delicate, wonderful beauty. He squeezed her arm. ‘When are you going to marry, Campion?’

      She smiled at the question. ‘You don’t give up, uncle, do you?’

      ‘There are a hundred young men who would lay their souls at your feet! A thousand!’

      ‘Nonsense.’ She looked away from him. ‘That coppice needs trimming. I told Wirrell last week.’

      ‘And don’t change the subject,’ Achilles said. ‘You should marry someone, my dear Campion. It is time you were worshipped. That is what women are for! To be worshipped, to be stroked, to be adored.’

      ‘To be loved?’

      ‘You talk of illusions.’

      ‘To be decorative, then?’ she asked him teasingly.

      ‘Of course,’ he replied seriously.

      They had reached the strip of grass between the Castle’s lake and the great, wrought-iron fence that fronted the Shaftesbury road. Achilles stopped and looked over the water. ‘Magnificent.’

      They were looking at the celebrated view of Lazen, the one that had been drawn and painted so often that Campion claimed the artists’ easels had permanently marked the lawn at this spot.

      From this lake bank Lazen Castle spread across their view in all its magnificence. The Castle had taken two centuries to build, yet it was marvellously coherent. It was really three houses. To the right was the Old House with its Long Gallery and its great windows that reflected the day’s grey light. The Old House was joined by a bridge of rooms to the Great House, and the bridge also formed the portico beneath which carriages drew up to deliver guests to the Castle.

      The Great House was the tallest building, topped by the huge banner of Lazen, and fronted by the fluted columns that reared so arrogantly from the great spread of gravel. It was there, in the Great House, that Campion’s father had lain for fifteen years, ever since his best-loved hunter had fallen on him, rolled on him, and bequeathed him paralysis and pain.

      To the left was the lowest part of the building, the Garden House that was joined to the Great House by a curving, pillared arcade. It had been built for Campion’s mother, a gift from her husband, but now it was used as a guest wing. It was in the Garden House that Uncle Achilles had been staying on this visit that ended today. Campion stared at Lazen Castle, seeing it reflected in the wide lake. It was home to more than two hundred people; grooms, maids, cooks, footmen, postilions, cellarmen, seamstresses, servants by the score, and all fed and paid by Lazen, their babies born in the town and raised in the Castle’s shadow, their beer brewed in the Castle’s brewhouse, their linen pounded in the Castle’s fullery, their corn ground in the Castle’s mill.

      Her uncle stared at her. ‘Do you ever get tired of it?’

      ‘Never!’ She smiled wistfully, took his elbow again, and began walking. ‘Do you ever wish that nothing should change?’ She looked up at him. ‘That everything would just stop?’ She waved at the Castle. ‘Perhaps next summer? On a day of perfection? If we could just leave it like that for ever?’ She laughed at her own fancy.

      He stopped walking, took her face in his long, thin hands on which, perversely, he still wore his bishop’s ring, and kissed her solemnly on the forehead. ‘Dear Campion, may I say something offensive?’

      ‘Uncle?’

      ‘This is serious advice.’

      ‘Oh dear.’ She smiled.

      ‘It is time you grew up.’ His face, thin and intelligent, was extraordinarily attractive. He was the cleverest man Campion knew, the most interesting, the most unexpected. The lines of age seemed delicately etched beneath the powder on his face. He smiled. ‘I’ve offended you.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘I should have offended you, then.’ He took her elbow and walked on with her. ‘Lazen is not yours, my dear. It will go to Toby and Lucille. You will lose Lazen just as I lost Auxigny. You have your own life to make and the sooner you make it, the better. You should not be here adding up columns of figures and worrying about the harvest and paying the wages; you should be in London. You should be dancing.’

      ‘That doesn’t sound like growing up.’

      He walked in silence for a few paces. ‘Experience is growing up, Campion. What’s your family motto?’

      ‘Dare all.’

      ‘And you dare nothing! You stay here like a nun in a convent. Of course you’re happy here. You live in the greatest house in western England, you live off the greatest fortune in the realm. You want for nothing, you only have to lift a finger and the servants trample each other to provide for you. I know!’ He raised his gold topped cane to ward off her reply. ‘I know! You work hard. Yet you chose to do that, just as you could have chosen to do nothing. But you exercise your choice in safety. You are like a ship that must leave harbour, a beautiful ship, well built, splendidly rigged, and you dare not leave the quay.’ He stopped and smiled at her. ‘Yet one day, my child, there will be no more harbour, no more quay, no more safety.’

      She stared at him, sensing the seriousness in him, then smiled. ‘Lazen will go?’

      ‘Of course not. It’s eternal.’

      She smiled. ‘Toby will be here.’

      ‘Ah.’ He mocked her with faked comprehension. ‘So the nun will grow old in her brother’s household? When you are really old your great-grandnephews and nieces will be brought to look at you; “See the old lady!