‘Have some sense,’ I snapped at her. ‘Sansevino got here ahead of us. He knew we’d follow him. And if he could kill us all—’
‘He would not dare. He is afraid now.’
‘He’s as cunning as the devil,’ I said. ‘And cruel. He’ll use your father as a bait.’
She was trembling again now as she realised all the possibilities. ‘Perhaps he has come up here to kill him,’ she breathed.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘So long as we’re alive he may need your father in order to bargain with us.’
‘Bargain with us?’
I nodded. ‘I have something that he wants. You see that doorway over there?’ I pointed to an opening in the stone wall on the far side of the courtyard. ‘Go and wait for me there.’ I turned to the Fiat. As I lifted the bonnet I heard her crunching through the ash of the courtyard. I removed the rotor arm and closed the bonnet again. I immobilised Maxwell’s Buick in the same way. Then I joined Hilda in the doorway. ‘If the others are successful—’ I shrugged my shoulders. ‘If not, then we’ve still got a chance.’
The courtyard was full of vague shadows that seemed to move with the varying intensity of the glare. It was an incredible scene, like a stage setting of the sunset glow on Dunsinane.
‘Do you still think me a coward?’ I asked her.
I could see her face against the red glare of the upper half of the monastery buildings. It was like a cameo — the firm set of the jaw, the little tip-tilted nose. She hadn’t moved. She was watching the doorway through which the others had disappeared. Then her hand found mine and gripped it as she had done in the car coming up. It seemed an age that we stood there, waiting and watching that doorway.