The Chateau Ricordeau serial now wraps itself up with a ten-minute epilogue, a few hours after the Tripod’s departure. It must be the same day because the spectators are still in their Tournament finery, the padded chairs are still out on the stand, and Will is still clutching the grey cloth pennant. Sarlat, symmetrically, has also been drawn back to the field. “You too are remembering, I think.” In this final phase Sarlat does not even especially dislike Will, and the whole triangular revenge plot, like something out of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses”, seems just another form of recreational cruelty, like the jousting. Perhaps they will end up on speaking terms.

This all seems so integral to the story that it comes as a jolt to remember that Sarlat isn’t in the book at all (though his tournament opponent, Trouillon, glancingly is). Sarlat personifies resentment of this English interloper, and makes the Chateau less of a safe haven. But he is also needed to provide the final twist of fate. In the novel, the knights vote among themselves for a Queen, with Eloise the inevitable winner. But if that were the situation in the show, then the betrothal scenes would have been a cruel joke, because everybody would have known that no marriage could ever take place. So for the plot to make sense, the taking of Eloise has to come as a surprise. That’s why the TV show says that the Tripod only rarely attends the Tournament, which is quite the opposite of what the novel says, and why the champion, one man alone, makes the choice of Queen. We need Sarlat in order to provide that one man. All of this could have been avoided without the betrothal, of course, which doesn’t happen in the book since Will is not quite fourteen there. But television’s Will is older, and must be tempted with more than just a comfortable resumption of childhood.

As so often in this show, the screenwriter has had to shift a psychological, largely internal-to-Will horror in order to make it visible. On screen, Eloise’s selection is immediately followed by her being taken away by the Tripod, in a rush of events. In the book several days elapse first, and since Will extricates himself during those days, he never actually witnesses it. Television was quite right to make this change. Both versions of this story work in their own media, and neither would quite work in the other.

In the show, at any rate, the Ricordeau family is now reduced to three — Count, Countess and Will. Remember M. Guernichet’s portrait from episode 6? We now see why it was painted: to give us a lingering shot of “Eloise”, who looks older, something she will never be. Each time we see the sitting room, a different Ricordeau is playing the piano, and now it’s the Count who completes a simple sonata in a major key. The Countess sits next to a birdcage and an immense purple and white floral display. Will speaks of Eloise in the past tense, they speak of her in the present. It’s a bittersweet scene, with Will’s adoptive parents appalled when he says she might as well have drowned. In an eloquent three-shot the Count has one hand holding down Will’s shoulder — I don’t think it’s an accident that both his signet ring and Will’s are shown to camera — while the Countess rests her hand more reassuringly on Will’s other arm. Will asks to miss the Tournament banquet, and the Count says it is a duty. His real message is: you’re still my son. Will puts down the wine, which he hasn’t touched a drop of, and breaks away, leaving the Count and Countess to have a sad exchange about how he doesn’t understand. It’s the same conversation his previous parents had at the start of episode 2, and once again, these are their final lines of dialogue.

The banquet is all the more atmospheric for being a dumb-show, the soft jazz quartet led by a double-bass, the maids in black and white, the footmen in burgundy red. We are deep into the evening now, with dinner already at the coffee stage. Fruit bowls are suitably Mediterranean and hold nothing you can’t grow in France. Will sits on the Count’s left while an amused Sarlat, opposite him at the top table, murmurs to his trophy girlfriend, whose turban is especially bejewelled. There’s a sense of endlessness as the guitarist strums but makes no melodic progress, and the Count is now making a little circuit of the room, introducing Will to as many nobles as possible. Loose knots of diners stand under the tapestries, taking brandy from balloon glasses… as Will slips away through the servants’ door, taking care not to be seen, and up the staircase to the study. He steals a compass from under a glass case — it’s clearly a valuable and prized object, no small thing to filch — and a map. The moment he pulls the signet ring from his finger and places it on the silver salver, his last act as a Ricordeau, it’s as if the old soundtrack, the synthesised one which accompanied his previous travels, has been woken up again.

Next: Episode 8, second half ● Prev: Aside — Unmasking