I think the castle never looked so good to me as now, for all that one lot of pirates are in charge of it and I am being forced to help another band even more determined to have it for their own.

The grounds around it are another matter; even before the despoilings inflicted by our mongrel dispossessed cutting wood for fires, digging latrines in our lawns the fields, woods and policies were running down, going to seed, becoming neglected. We lost our estate manager two years ago, and I only ever distantly interested in the running of the estate could not find it in me to take his place. Thereafter, gradually, all the other estate workers were taken by the war, one way or the other, and nature, unrestrained, began to renew its old authority over the burden of our lands.

“There, at the stables,” the lieutenant whispers, over the noise of raindrops pattering through the foliage around us. “Those two four wheel drives.”

“Ours,” I tell her. We left them there, and the stable doors unlocked, knowing that to attempt to secure anything would only invite more damage. “Although we didn't leave the doors open like that.”

“That building with the slatted sides at the back of the garages,” the lieutenant says. “Is that a generator house?”

“Yes.”

“Any fuel for it?” She looks at me hopefully.

Only under our carriage. “The tank ran dry last month,” I tell her, truthfully enough. Saving our last few drums of diesel, we have mostly used candles for light and open fires for heating since then; the kitchen stoves burn wood too. There were fires and lamps that ran off propane, but we used up the final cylinder last night, before we left.

“Hmm,” our lieutenant says, as the soldier to her other side nudges her and points. We watch as a man another irregular, as far as I can see appears from the stable block, puts a drum in the back of one of the four wheel drives and then starts it, bringing it round to the front of the castle, out of sight from us.