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And then, almost before he had decided to do so, he gathered his strength together and half vaulting, half tumbling himself over the sill, fell the first half dozen feet through the loose outer fringes of the ivy, before he snatched at the stems and, checking the momentum of his descent, found that he was at last hanging from branches that had ceased to break.

He had noted that the small, suspicious area of ivy for which he was making was directly below the window from which he had vaulted (and which was now filled with startled faces), directly below, and at water level. He could hear his name being called and orders being shouted across the ‘bay’ for a boat to be brought up immediately, but they were sounds from another world.

And yet, while this sense of being far removed from what he was doing held him suspended in a world of dreams he was, at the same time, drawn down the ivy-wall as though by a magnet. Within the blur of weakness and remoteness was a core of vivid impulse, an immediate purpose.

He hardly knew what his body was doing. His arms and legs and hands seemed to be making their own decisions. He followed them downwards through the leaves.

But Steerpike, who had had to alter his position when an unbearable cramp had affected his left leg and shoulder, and who had hoped that a careful stretching of his limbs would in no way affect the stillness of the outermost leaves, had by now heard the noise of branches breaking above him, and knew that the results of his movement were dire indeed. After so desperately fought a battle for refuge from his pursuers, it was indeed a malicious fate that saw to it that he should so soon be discovered.

He had of course no idea that it was the young earl who was descending upon him. His eyes were fixed upon the dark tangle of fibrous arms above his face. It was obvious that whosoever it was would not make his descent through the body of the ivy, close to the wall. To do this would be to move at a snail’s pace, and to battle all the way with the heaviest branches. His pursuer would slide down the outer foliage and probably burrow wall-wards when a little above and out of reach of him.

And this is what Titus intended, for when he was about five feet above the water he came to a stop and waited a little to regain his breath.

The moon which was now high in the sky had to some extent made the torches redundant. The bosom of the bay was leprous. The ivy leaves reflected a glossy light. The faces at the windows were both blanched and wooden.

For a moment he wondered whether Steerpike had moved, had climbed from where a foot above the water he had seen the tell-tale ivy come to life and shiver, and whether he, Titus, was even now within a few inches of his foe, and in mortal peril. It seemed strange at that instant that no daggered hand arose out of the leaves and stabbed him where he hung. But nothing happened. The silence was accentuated rather than lessened by the sound of distant oars rising and falling in the bay.

Then, with his left hand gripping some interior stem, he forced away the swathes before his face and peered into the heart of the foliage where the branches shone like a network of white and twisted bones at the inrush of the moonbeams.

There was but one course for him. To burrow in as deeply as he could, and then to descend in the gloom until he found his foe. The moonlight was now so strong that a kind of deep twilight had taken the place of the rayless midnight among the leaves. Only at the deeply-hidden face of the wall itself was the darkness complete. If Titus could reach as far inward as the wall and work his way down it might be possible to see, before he reached the level of the flood, some shape that was not the shape of ivy branch or leaf – some curve or angle that loomed among the leaves – perhaps an elbow, or a knee, or the bulge of a forehead …

VI

The murderer had not moved. Why should he move? There was little to choose between one cradle of