High Road to China. Jon Cleary

are welcome to my valley,’ said the Countess.

      ‘Thank you,’ I said, and found myself doing a Kern: I clicked my heels and bowed. ‘Where are we?’

      ‘In the Valley Malevitza. The border between Roumania and Bulgaria runs down the middle of this road, right through my house. You are in Roumania at this moment.’

      ‘And the young ladies are Bulgarian?’ Kern gestured towards the women standing among the rose bushes on the other side of the road.

      ‘Young? Your eyesight is not very good, Baron. Only one of them is young.’ The Countess gave them only a cursory glance, as if they were no more than thorns or faded blooms on the bushes.

      ‘I don’t think the Baron looked too carefully at their faces,’ said Miss Tozer.

      The Countess laughed heartily: it came up out of her belly, like a fat man’s. ‘It is the custom among some of the women. They dare not show their faces to a strange man at first. What else they show is not an invitation. Their menfolk would cut the stranger’s throat if he thought it was.’

      I saw the men standing further back in the rose fields. They had risen up from among the bushes; more women and children were also appearing. There must have been a hundred of them spread out through the fields on either side of the road, dark, silent figures among the blaze of red, pink and white blooms. Each man’s hand glittered: it was a moment before I realized each of them held a sharp pruning knife.

      Sun Nan had got out of Miss Tozer’s plane. He looked pale and sick, but he put on his bowler hat against the fierce sun and stood holding on to the lower wing of the machine, doing a good job of looking dignified. The Countess glanced at him, but made no comment: like Kern she dismissed him as a servant. Nobody, in her book, would have an Oriental with him or her unless he was a servant.

      ‘Why did you land here in my valley?’

      I explained the circumstances and pointed to the remains of Kern’s top wing. ‘I’m afraid the Baron can’t take off again until we repair that. Is there somewhere around here where we can stay, an inn or something?’

      ‘You will be my guests. Follow me.’ She swung her horse round. I wondered if we were supposed to gallop after her on foot.

      ‘Countess, I don’t want to leave the machines parked here with no one to look after them.’

      I don’t know what I really expected to happen to the planes, unless I thought the rose-gatherers would attack them with their pruning knives. It struck me that none of these peasants, wild-looking and isolated in this mountain valley, had seen an aeroplane before, at least not on the ground and quite possibly not even in the sky. I had vague memories of reading of Balkan superstitions and there was no guarantee that these particular Balkans trusted the strange contraptions that had fallen down out of the clear hot sky into their midst. I had only a hazy idea where we were, but Dracula country couldn’t be too far away.

      ‘Bring them with you.’ She dug her heels into her horse and went up the road at full gallop, trailing a long thin veil of dust.

      I shrugged, turned to the others. ‘She’s the hostess.’

      ‘I think she’s mad,’ said Miss Tozer. ‘Do you think we should stay with her?’

      ‘What choice do we have? Even if I can find some canvas and varnish right away, it’s going to take me at least two days to rebuild that wing.’

      She hid her dismay, but I knew she had guessed it was not going to be a ten-minute repair job. Kern said, ‘You can go on without me and I’ll try to catch you up.’

      I waited for Miss Tozer to give the decision, but she was looking at me. She was the boss, but with George Weyman’s departure I had become what I suppose one would call the technical manager. ‘I think it’s better we stick together, at least for the time being. We still have a few days in hand.’