AD UTCHMAN PAINTING THIS SCAPE would have had little recourse to pigments; a spate of gull-shit on a bench could have served as his palette. The sky was white, and so was the ground. The branches of the trees were black, except where snow had begun sticking to them. The château was half-timbered, therefore plaster-white in most places, webbed with ancient timbers that had turned the color of charcoal as they absorbed snow-damp. The roof was red tile; but this was mostly covered in snow. From place to place the presence of a stove underneath was betrayed by a seeping lake of red. It was not especially grand as châteaux went nowadays: a rectangular court open on the side facing the Channel, with stables to one side, servants’ quarters to the other, and the big house holding them together, squarely facing the sea. Before it the ground dropped away sharply, and so the shoreline was not visible: just a distant strip of gray saltwater, which faded into the white atmosphere far short of the Dover shore.