Episode 5 constitutes Act I of a three-act play, and is the best of the three, not least because it is the most tightly plotted by far. It must get Will from pauper to prince in around twenty minutes without ever quite triggering the viewer’s disbelief, and it must explain why the heroes have not been immediately handed over for Capping. There is no scene which is not serving one or both of those goals. We open on Will regaining consciousness attended by Eloise, a slender young woman in a turban. He has been out cold for “four days and three nights”, so it is now perhaps 20 July, and the Countess Ricordeau, Eloise’s elegant mother, joins them. This is a critical scene because we need to witness Will making a good first impression on both women. They enjoy using the English they learned as children, wearing it like a stylish dress, and between that, his bravely-borne injury, and his personable manner, they make Will a guest of the family — something which would never have happened had he simply knocked on the front door. Caring for him was “la gentillesse”, the duty of courtesy — a word mentioned twice — but while this dark stranger was hovering between life and death, they evidently grew a little smitten. “Don’t you understand?” says Will under duress, when trying to explain these events to interrogators, months later. “They liked me, they just liked me.” As we’ll see, there’s a little more to it than that.

The Chateau is revealed to us from the inside out, beginning with this innermost citadel. The bedroom is densely stocked with art and fine furniture, and by implication with the wealth and taste of the Ricordeaus. Beanpole, though, is more interested in the handful of scientific or modern props, as we see in the next little scene, where the trio reunites and Beanpole plays with the metal-framed chair. He and Henry, who’ve been awake these four days, catch Will up on the situation. There’s to be a Tournament “in five weeks” (so, on perhaps 27 August) and Beanpole makes the fateful proposal that they stay until then, and escape in the general coming-and-going. This is the viewer’s only warning that we’ll be here for a while.

The library upstairs, with its statuary, tapestries and Chinese cabinets, is the grandest of the interiors, and it’s there that we meet the Count, our third major character, and discover his veiled dislike of the Duc de Sarlat, our fourth. Sarlat embodies entitlement, and his lip-curling haughtiness verges on the fascist, which is, let’s face it, always fun to watch. But if Sarlat craves power, the Count embodies it, and it is a power which animates the whole Chateau — all of which is a very considerable elaboration on the novel, where the Count is a simple fellow ruled by his wife, speaks no English and is given no surname, and Sarlat does not exist. Still, the setup is substantially the same. We have gone from a post-industrial Paris to an pre-Enlightenment estate like Fontainebleau, in the old aristocratic hunting forests south of the city. It is a mark of the Count’s strength that in this episode he can discard a duke as his future son-in-law in favour of a more malleable commoner. The Count’s increasing disapproval of Sarlat means that Will has arrived at the perfect moment. This is the second of the reasons for his rapid social climb.

What the boys cannot understand is why they are not under arrest. “Go everywhere,” says the Count, “be free” — a key word throughout the Chateau Ricordeau serial, until finally, greatly provoked in the epilogue, Will all but shouts: “Free! Who is free?” But for now, all is contentment and ease. It seems to be a week or two later as we relax into the castle grounds, glimpsing a greenish unchlorinated bathing pool on the sunlit terrace where Eloise’s cousins lounge on rococo, white-painted chairs. Croquet is being played. The music is settled and reassuring, like the weather. Of course, only Will has the golden ticket here: Henry radiates disaffection and Beanpole pensively walks a shaggy black dog. As the four make a circuit of the battlements, Eloise describes a year in the life of the Chateau with a monologue lifted whole from the text of the novel. This portrait of the cycle of life, like a medieval Book of Hours, emphasises that nothing ever changes here. The Ricordeaus live on another level entirely than the villagers of Wherton, whom they are amused to hear stories about, but they are exactly as trapped in perpetual motion.

Next in our tour of the Chateau is the Count’s study, lit by a mullioned window. This is the man who has everything — more tapestry, a Louis XV chair, two globes (one hinging open to reveal a tantalus of wine), a telescope, a long-case clock, what I think is a cello, and a desk festooned with eighteenth-century writing tools in dark wood and brass, together with an oil lamp. It pleases the Count to appoint himself tutor to the boys. This scene is not much more than a punctuation mark, though, setting up the next by emphasising the difference in rank opening up. Note the three-shot of the boys sitting in a row, with Will dressed like a mini-me Count himself, and the others too scruffy for the sofa they sit on. Beanpole even still has the dog in tow, on a long braided rope.

And so we cut to a private conference between the travellers, the first of several at the far end of the dark Squires’ dormitory, where Henry and Beanpole sleep in spare beds. A sunken room whose candlesticks barely relieve the deep shadow, it’s a counterpoint to the airy cream-silk world upstairs. Henry and Beanpole are right down the far end, and this cellar-like space is lengthened in our eyes by the presence of other squires in the “distance”. While Henry and Beanpole make unsentimental escape plans, Will flinches from all the stealing involved, until he’s recalled by Christoph, his new valet. The Ricordeaus would never come down to this room, and Christoph’s body language suggests that Will shouldn’t either. (Body language is the only language Christoph ever has, unless you count one murmur of the word “M’sieur” which, if you missed it, was five minutes ago.) Henry’s jealousy is an unappealing side to him and, with the camera always giving Will’s point of view, we just don’t want to hear him. Everything he says is correct.

Eloise takes Will horse-riding in the grounds, and boating on a sumptuous lake (which the script calls “the river”), in dream-like shots vaguely suggestive of young love and endless summer days — though this is punctuated by a dark confrontation between the Parkers, for once without Beanpole as peacemaker. We must by now have drifted well into August (despite the fires lit in the great hall and in Will’s bedroom): indeed, extras are already setting up the Tournament dais, menial work which Henry and Beanpole are conscripted into.

And then Sarlat, of whose jealousy we have been warned, suddenly acts. We cut to a confrontation in the great library. The Count, and only the Count, sits at a magnificent octagonal table. Everybody else stands more or less at attention, though Sarlat does it with insolence, and the three Black Guards are far from subservient. The boys line up opposite, as if it’s a firing squad. The French word the Guards use for them, “évadés”, has a more criminal ring than “runaway” (which “Les Montagnes Blanches” translated as the softer term “fuyard”). Their heads are humiliatingly checked for Caps, even though everybody present knows their status already. The jig would be up except that the Count is not going to tolerate anybody telling him what to do. Talking past each other, the Count and the Guards do not acknowledge each other’s authority: and once the Guards are gone, the boys — huddled beside an arrowslit-like overlook from a stone staircase above the library — overhear the Count and Sarlat in a full-on shouting match. Their French is elementary enough that we’re clearly meant to follow it. “Mais la loi de la région —”, Sarlat unwisely presses, and the Count rounds on him: “Mais ici, la loi, c’est moi.” Whether or not Louis XIV actually said “l’État, c’est moi” in 1655 seems to be disputed nowadays, but it’s still everybody’s one-liner of what the ancien régime stood for. The Europe of The Tripods has no nation states, only local power structures — in the novel, we’re told that both England and France have kings, but in the show, the Count is answerable to nobody. Eloise later says that if the Count had been away, “you perhaps would have been taken to Grandville” — like Bonneville in episode 3, a fairly generic name, though it could be the commune near Trois, in north-central France. All of this suggests that the Count is almost the only individual stronger than the Guard, and only when facing them down personally.

Rattled, Will, Henry and Beanpole agree to make a break in two more days. That puts the pressure on Will, who has only one day available in which to recruit Eloise as a fellow évadée. Next morning they go boating on the lake, their private place. They each wear quilted silk jackets, and have a big hamper with far more cutlery than any picnic for two could possibly need. Will nerves himself up to enlist Eloise as a fourth member of the party, but she pays little attention, and instead kisses him. The boat swiftly overturns — let’s not think about the symbolism here — and there’s a skilful vision-mix from Will duck-diving into the deep-looking water to rescue her, onto another pool, this one of swimming orange light, from the candles around Eloise’s bed. Importantly, though no attention is drawn to this, she’s not bareheaded: her turban is replaced by a towel.

All three Chateau episodes end on a stylish flourish of direction, and in this one it’s a shot which elegantly bookends the episode’s opening. Once again we are in a richly appointed bedroom, but this time the positions of Will and Eloise have been exchanged: now she is the one unconscious in centre frame, and he is the one placed to her left, watching. The Count and Countess hover over her too, and we finally reach the moment the whole episode has been pointed toward. By performing what, in their eyes, is a chivalric act, Will has given them a third reason to adopt him. The Count offers him a signet ring and Will takes it, the two of them reaching across Eloise’s sleeping form. The bargain, the camera implies, is both the ring and her body. “We liked you very much even before you saved the life of our daughter… We wish you for a son. To marry Eloise, when the time is right.” The trap has closed: Act I curtain.

Next: Aside — What Genre Even Is This? ● Prev: Introduction to Part II