‘What horrendous crime did he commit, yet escape execution?’

‘No one knows that, either. There’s a lot of legends. One is that he was the Due de Vermandois, an illegitimate son of Louis, although on the face of it that’s an extreme way to treat your own son. In his book, if you remember, Dumas copied Voltaire in suggesting the man was an illegitimate elder brother of Louis, fathered by Cardinal Mazarin. There’s also a lot of historical insistence that he was a Count Mattiolo, a minister of the Duke of Mantua, who tried to trick Louis during diplomatic negotiations and was punished with a totally unknown and unrecognized living death.’

Alyce shuddered. ‘Kept locked up for forty years!’

‘A non person for forty years, someone whose face was never again seen except by his jailers: there’s even a story that he had to wear the mask before he was given food, so that even the jailers wouldn’t know what he looked like. If he defied them and refused to put it on, he wasn’t fed.’

Jordan thought she was remarkably agile, disembarking at the island, as she had been boarding the catamaran. She slowly read the memorial plaque and collected the pamphlet, and in the bare cell, which was very cold compared to the outside near midday heat, she shuddered again several times.

‘Whatever he did, he didn’t deserve what was done to him,’ she insisted.

‘It had to be bad.’

‘It doesn’t make any difference.’

By the time they returned to the anchored catamaran the crew had erected a sun awning. Alyce didn’t refuse the champagne but stopped at the second glass of Chablis and didn’t need any urging to eat the lobster with her fingers. They let the strongest heat go out of the day before swimming off the port fin, Jordan delaying his climb back on to the boat because of his momentary and too obvious excitement at seeing her, surprisingly unashamed, in the briefest of bikinis. When they got back to Cannes she said she wanted to walk back rather than call for the hotel car or a taxi, and did so almost immediately taking his hand, moving her fingers over his. She said she wasn’t hungry when he suggested dinner but that the sea air had tired her and that she thought she’d go directly to bed.