TEN

Grand sat with his back to the Forty-Niner’s door. At the Coal Hole in the Strand, or any of London’s watering holes, he wouldn’t have bothered, but this was Pulaski, Tennessee, home of the Klan. Here, men carried guns and their tempers were short. The man who had fought so many battles wondered again that day what had it all been for.

The saloon itself had clearly once had pretensions. It had etched-glass windows, brass fittings to the bar and a honky-tonk piano in the corner. The waitresses, if there had ever been any, had long gone, and the only service came from the bar, where the Red Eye was cheap and the cigar smoke lingered. Forty-Niner was an odd name and as Grand sat in a shadowed corner, his hat on the beer-ringed table in front of him, he realized that the clientele wouldn’t know a gold nugget from a hole in the head. They came in all shapes and sizes, but they were all men, some still wearing Confederate gray, their jackets torn and patched. One man had lost an arm. Another swung on crutches, his progress to the bar slow and painful. Yet another still had the parchment-yellow skin and sunken eyes of a prisoner of war, from the hellhole that was Camp Douglas.

But it was none of these that Grand targeted. He was watching the boy in the fancy vest with a derby hat perched on the back of his head and a shabby frock coat that fitted him nowhere. Grand was playing solitaire, flicking the cards from one hand to another, tossing them in the air and catching them again. When he had done this a few times, the object of his attention wandered over.

‘You play poker, mister?’ the boy asked.

Grand looked up at him. He was no more than twenty, which would have made him seventeen when the war ended. Old enough, Grand knew. The bloody ground from Richmond to Shiloh was strewn with the bodies of seventeen year olds. ‘Poker?’ he said in impeccable Arkansas, ‘Satan’s game, son. My granpappy, the minister, wouldn’t allow playing cards in the house. Said they were the devil’s picture book.’

‘All right,’ the boy shrugged, backing away. ‘My mistake.’

Grand let him get halfway across the room before he said, ‘Twenty-One, now; that’s different.’

The boy smiled and came back, scraping a chair from the table and extending a grubby hand. ‘Lester Merkel,’ he said.

‘Matthew Granger,’ Grand said, shaking it. ‘You from these parts, Lester?’

‘Yessir. Born and bred right here in Pulaski. You?’

‘All over.’ Grand called the barman over. ‘A bottle of your best bourbon,’ he said, ‘and a glass for my friend here.’

‘That’s mighty white of you,’ Merkel said, and watched in a daze as Grand shuffled the cards.

‘What do you say, Lester?’ the man who was not from all over asked. ‘Dollar a point?’

Merkel blinked. He worked the warehouses on the creek. A dollar was a day’s wage for him.

‘Just joshing you, son,’ Grand smiled. ‘I’d play for the pleasure of your company.’

Lester Merkel had never crossed the state line out of Tennessee, but even so, he had heard of men who liked the company of other, younger men. He decided to be very wary of this stranger. But that was a decision he made at half past two by the Forty-Niner’s clock. By half past three, after more bourbon than was good for him and more wins at Twenty-One than were likely by the law of averages, Lester Merkel was more than a little relaxed. His wins became more numerous still and his tongue ever looser.

‘Any action round here, Lester?’ Grand asked, having gone bust for the umpteenth time.

‘Action?’ Merkel was slurring and Matthew Granger appeared to be blurring at the edges.

‘I hear there’s some Contraband in these parts getting above their station.’

‘Don’t get me started on uppity niggers,’ Merkel shook his head. ‘Anyhow, we’ve got that covered.’

‘You have?’

The boy waited until Grand had refilled his glass, then leaned forward, the queen and ace in his hand yet again temporarily forgotten. ‘There’s a fella not far north of here,’ he whispered, ‘name of Peters.’

‘What about him?’

‘The black bastard owns a coupla acres and a mule.’

Grand frowned. ‘How did he manage that?’

‘That’s Tennessee for you.’ Merkel leaned back and closed his eyes; then, regretting it immediately when the room spun round, opened them wide and tried to focus. ‘Mason-Dixon line gets a mite hazy this far west. We’ve got more free Contraband than they got in Africa, I shouldn’t wonder. And we’re fixing to do something about that.’

‘Who’s we?’ Grand asked.

Merkel’s mouth opened; then he checked himself. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s a basic rule. I can’t tell nobody; not even a gentleman like yourself.’

‘I understand,’ Grand nodded solemnly, topping up the boy’s bourbon. ‘The colonel always said the same thing back in the day.’

‘The colonel?’

‘Mosby.’ Grand dropped the name as casually as many men dropped their aitches.

Merkel’s jaw dropped too. ‘You … you know Mosby?’ There was sheer, unadulterated awe in his voice. ‘The gray ghost?’

‘I had the honour to ride with him,’ Grand lied. To be fair, it was not that far from the truth. He had ridden after the Rebel renegade on many an occasion. And had never caught him once.

‘What about …?’ Merkel began, but Grand’s hand was in the air.

‘Like I said, son,’ he said, ‘I can’t tell you a goddamned thing.’

‘Yeah, sure, sure.’ It was Merkel’s turn to reach for the bottle, topping up Grand’s glass. It wasn’t easy and he slopped most of it onto the table. ‘No, I understand. Sure.’

For a moment, there was a silence as each man drank and looked at the other. In a contest like that, the green boy from Pulaski was no match for a man who had ridden with Mosby.

‘Say what,’ Merkel had a proposition in mind. ‘You tell me all about your time with Mosby. And I’ll tell you about Nathan Forrest.’

Grand screwed up his face. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘All respect to General Forrest, but that’s a bit like swapping a knave for an ace.’

‘All right.’ Merkel took Grand’s point. ‘How about I introduce you to General Forrest?’

Grand looked at the boy, his eyes sparkling with the heady mix of bourbon and enthusiasm. ‘I don’t know …’ he said.

‘Look, we’ve got some business tonight, me and the boys, with that son of a bitch Peters I told you about.’

‘You have?’

‘Sure. Put a rattler up his ass, pay a call, you know. But tomorrow night … Well, that’ll be a night to remember.’

‘It will?’

‘I’ll have to talk to the Grand Cyclops.’

‘Who?’

‘Better you don’t know for now,’ Merkel assured him, ‘but as soon as he knows you rode with Mosby, it’ll be fine. You can come to the Den and meet the Grand Wizard himself.’

‘The Grand Wizard?’ To Grand, this sounded ever more ludicrous.

‘General Forrest.’

‘I see.’ Grand sipped his bourbon and laid down his pathetic hand of cards. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if I can make it. Now,’ he leaned back, ‘I first set eyes on Colonel Mosby on …’

At first they were white shapes in the darkness, moving slowly and without noise. Ghosts, men said, of dead Rebels whose souls could not rest because the South was still bleeding. Grand lay flat on a tree-lined ridge, hoping the sound of his horse cropping the lush grass wouldn’t attract too much attention.

Batchelor had suggested, in that rather oblique way of his, that he should come along too, but Grand had firmly turned him down. On the hard-pounded streets of London, James Batchelor was a good man to have at your side; but out here, in what to him was a wilderness, he would be out of his depth. The man wasn’t even much of a rider and it felt good for Grand, the ex-cavalryman, to be back in a McClellan saddle again. Trotting round St James’s Park really hadn’t filled the void in his soul; this was the real thing.

So here he was, with rations for three days and a Sharps rifle bought from Deery’s, watching a surreal scene unfold. The white shapes had sharpened now and he counted eight men in tall, hideous hoods, their masks like the scarecrows he remembered as a child in the fields beyond Washington City. One of them carried what appeared to be lengths of timber. So did another. They made no sound; said nothing. Grand looked closer. Even their horses’ hooves were wrapped in sacking so that they padded over the grass flitches, fanning out to right and left as silent as a dream.

The men with the timbers dismounted and silently went to work. Beyond them, Grand could see the black silhouette of a lonely farmhouse. Two more dismounted and sneaked beyond the barn. Alert as he was, Grand heard every tiny sound. He heard what he fancied was the rattle of a chain and the sudden yelp of a dog, shrill and sharp. Then silence. The two men came back, carrying something between them.

Before his eyes, Grand saw the timbers hauled skywards, lashed together in the shape of a cross. As the horses shifted under the weight of their riders, the two men still on the ground tossed a rope over an arm of the cross and tugged on it. At the noose end, a dead dog, still bleeding from its cut throat, twisted in the night air. At a signal from the leading horseman, a firebrand flashed from nowhere, the flame glinting on the dog’s chain and the blood on his matted fur. They applied the brand to the timbers and the whole thing burst into light, the smell of pitch rising with the sparks and the flames.

There was a crash from the farmhouse and the roar of a shotgun. The horsemen recoiled, steadying their mounts.

‘You people go to Hell, now, y’hear?’ the man with the shotgun shouted, but he had fired both barrels and would have to reload.

‘Behold,’ the leading horseman called back, his voice deep and muffled by the hood, ‘the light of Christ!’ and he pointed with his horsewhip to the crackling flames. Grand was in a dilemma. The man with the shotgun on his porch was out of ammunition, at least for now, and no one else was coming out to help. The horsemen, on the other hand, had eight guns at least. And those odds seemed less than reasonable. The last thing Grand wanted to do, however, was to tip his hand. He could bring down one, perhaps more with the Sharps, but that wasn’t going to get him anywhere near General Nathan Forrest. On the other hand, he couldn’t stand by and watch a man killed by these lunatics in fancy dress.

A moment, later, his problem was solved. Silently, the riders turned their horses’ heads as the farmer screamed at them and the cross blazed. A moment after that, the Klan and their horses were billowing white shapes again and Grand eased his thumb off the rifle’s hammer. The Invisible Empire had vanished completely.

They came in ones and twos on their cloth-foot horses, the Klansmen of Pulaski, walking the animals up the twisted paths that led to the ruined house. This had been a fine home once, with children running and laughing on the lawns. Ladies in lace and crinolines had danced with their beaux on the warmth of a summer evening, and all had seemed right with the world.

It was different now. The war and the weather had torn it down and ivy crawled its crumbling walls. There was no rocking chair on the porch now, and the storm-torn oaks stood like ghostly sentinels, watching the horsemen who rode in from the south. Two of these rode away from the others and only one wore the pointed hood of this Klavern. The other was Matthew Grand.

A solitary horseman, a cross stitched in silver on his hood, sat in his saddle by the roadside. Lester Merkel saluted him and the horseman waited. He was studying Grand closely, taking in the man’s bearing, his horse, his clothes, trying to gauge his worth. Then he slipped a silver whistle from his robes and blew three shrill blasts. While Grand and Merkel waited, three answering whistles echoed back from the direction of the old house.

Merkel had told Grand the gist of what would happen and he let his reins fall, holding out his arms in the form of a cross. Merkel dismounted and led his own horse and Grand’s up the hill. The house looked dark and foreboding ahead, and Grand knew that the men inside were those who had burned the cross in Peters’ front yard the night before. They had not drawn their guns then, content to let the black man run with sweat. But what would they do tonight with an ex-Billy Yank cavalryman in their midst?

Two Klansmen emerged from the old house. Grand swung out of the saddle, his arms still out to his side, and let them tie his wrists behind his back before blindfolding him. In total darkness, he felt himself prodded across a yard and he stumbled across the hard-baked, foot-rutted mud, turned to iron by the long Tennessee summer. He felt the air change. It was cool here and he knew he was inside. He half fell down the steps suddenly at his feet, and he counted them as he went down. Six, seven, eight, and he was on the level again. He heard a bang ahead, then a door swung open ahead of him, squealing on hinges eaten with rust. Then a second. And a third. He felt the two Klansmen at his back but could still see nothing but blackness.

Suddenly, he went down to a thump in the small of his back. His knees cracked on uneven flagstones; when he tried to get up, he felt a slap around the head and something hard and wooden hit him across the shoulders. He was hauled upright and thrown against a wall by silent assailants. His head was singing and he tasted blood trickling into his mouth. One of his teeth felt loose and his left arm was aching.

Just as suddenly as it had begun, the rough-housing stopped and he was steadied, held upright by strong hands.

‘Acolyte,’ he heard a stern voice shout and stood to attention. ‘I am the Grand Cyclops of the Pulaski Klavern of the Ku Klux Klan. Who are you?’

‘Matthew Granger,’ Grand said.

‘Where you from, Granger?’ the Cyclops asked.

‘Van Buren, Crawford County, Arkansas.’ Grand hoped he could keep the lazy accent up and also that Van Buren was small enough to be just another president as far as these lunatics were concerned.

‘Did you serve in the late war?’

‘I did.’

‘What outfit?’

‘Mosby’s Rangers.’

‘You were with him at Manassas?’ the Cyclops wanted to know.

‘Never been to Manassas in my life,’ Grand said, ‘and neither, as far as I know, has Colonel Mosby.’

There was a silence, then a roar of laughter, and not just from the Grand Cyclops.

‘Place him before the royal altar, boys,’ he said, ‘and adorn his head with the regal crown.’

Grand felt himself being led into another room. All sounds here echoed and he knew he was in a vaulted chamber, the cellar – or perhaps the still room – of the old house. He felt something being placed on his head, then his hands were untied and the blindfold came off. He was looking into an oval mirror set on a table hung with black cloth and lit by candles. His crown was a battered old wideawake with ass’s ears pinned to it. There were whoops and whistles and stamping from the Klansmen standing around.

‘Grand Cyclops.’ One of them stepped forward, taking off his hood and extending a hand. ‘You can call me Larry.’

‘You can call me a mule’s ass,’ Grand said, wiggling his loose tooth with his tongue.

‘Ezra Hammond,’ another Klansman swept off his hood. ‘Grand Turk.’

‘Charmed,’ Grand nodded.

‘Sorry about the Manassas question,’ the Cyclops said. ‘Can’t be too careful. Young Lester here’s not been with us long. Gets a bit carried away. So you rode with Mosby—’

‘Cyclops,’ the Grand Turk interrupted, ‘the Grand Wizard is waiting.’

‘Of course.’ The Cyclops put his hood back on. ‘Where are my manners? Granger, we’ll administer the oath later. The Grand Wizard takes precedence over such procedures.’

The Cyclops and the Turk led Grand, still with his donkey’s ears, out of the chamber and up some steps to a side room. At a table lit by a single candle, sat a man in the most hideous costume Grand had ever seen. It had horns protruding from each side of the hood and an evil skull grinned in gilt embroidery from the forehead. The man swept the cloth off and Grand recognized the face from Schleier’s photograph at once. The steady grey eyes, the square-cut goatee and the long, curled hair.

‘General Forrest,’ Grand saluted, regretting the move immediately as every muscle he possessed ached from the rough handling he had received.

‘Grand Wizard,’ the Cyclops reminded him.

‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ Forrest said, folding the hood neatly on the table. ‘Granger, won’t you take a seat?’

Grand would and did. The stewards disappeared. Forrest looked up at the floppy ears and gestured. The acolyte was relieved to take them off.

‘Sorry about the theatricals,’ Forrest said, and passed Grand a handkerchief to mop his bloody temple. ‘And about the horseplay. The boys get a little rough sometimes.’

‘That they do,’ Grand agreed.

‘You wanted to meet me.’ Forrest unbuttoned his white robe to reveal the frock coat of a Confederate general underneath, glittering with gold lace.

‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ Grand said.

‘Oh, where was that? The Army of the Potomac?’

Grand felt his heart pounding in his chest and the blood rushing in his ears. They didn’t call this man the Wizard of the Saddle for nothing.

‘No, I—’

‘I don’t know whether your name is Granger, whether you’re actually from Arkansas or whether you actually want to join the Klan …’ He paused, then leaned forward, ‘but you sure as Hell never rode with Mosby.’

‘Didn’t I?’ Grand dropped the accent and the clipped vowels of Washington came into play. ‘How do you know that?’

‘The salute,’ Forrest smiled. ‘Oh, Yank, Reb, blue, gray. Don’t make no never mind. But Mosby’s boys were a law unto themselves. They didn’t salute at all. Not even generals. So …’ he leaned back again. ‘Who are you really and what do you really want? I don’t flatter myself you just wanted to see face to face the bastard who ran rings around you Northern trash for so long.’

‘My name is Matthew Grand. I was with the Third Cavalry of the Potomac.’

Forrest nodded. ‘Good outfit, Grand,’ he said. ‘I’m impressed.’

‘That was then,’ Grand said. ‘Now I’m an enquiry agent. Looking into the murder of Lafayette Baker.’

Forrest’s eyes narrowed. ‘I heard the old bastard was dead,’ he said. ‘Didn’t realize it was murder.’

‘My enquiries took me to Knoxville,’ Grand said, ‘and, surprise, surprise, I saw a photograph of him there, sitting in a studio with you, General.’

‘That’s right!’ Forrest clicked his fingers. ‘Goddamn! I’ve gotta get that picture back.’

‘You have?’

Forrest fished out cigars, one for himself and one for Grand. ‘Let’s just say it wasn’t my finest hour. Baker was calling himself Samuel Munson back then, running guns for the South. Quite a few crates of Beecher’s Bibles, if I remember right. Wasn’t for a few weeks we found out they was about as serviceable as chicken-shit. By that time, of course, “Munson” had long gone. With a lot of Confederate gold in his pocket.’

‘What about his second in command?’

‘Who?’ Forrest asked, drawing on the cigar.

‘Caleb Tice.’

‘Caleb Tice? You’ve been misinformed, Grand. Caleb Tice was a member of the American Knights.’

‘The …?’

Forrest thrust two fingers between his lips and whistled loudly. The door crashed back and the Grand Cyclops stood there, hood gone, pistol gleaming in his hand.

‘No call for that, Larry,’ Forrest said. ‘Granger here has some pressing business. He’ll have to go through the ceremony some other time.’

‘Er … is that acceptable, Grand Wizard?’

Forrest looked levelly at the man. ‘It is if I say it is,’ he said. ‘That boy who brought Granger here, a Ghoul …’

‘Lester Merkel, Grand Wizard.’

‘The barrel, I think.’

‘The barrel?’ The Grand Cyclops blinked. ‘But that’s reserved for—’

‘Reprobates who don’t deserve to be in the Klan; yes, I know. I helped write the rules, remember? What’s the first rule of the Klan, Grand Cyclops?’

Larry stood an inch taller. ‘Absolute secrecy,’ he said.

Forrest nodded. ‘Seems that Ghoul Merkel hasn’t quite grasped that,’ he said, ‘seeing as he brought Granger here.’

‘But …’

‘The barrel, Larry,’ Forrest insisted quietly.

The Grand Cyclops hesitated, then slid the gun away and closed the door.

‘The boy Lester …’ Grand began.

Forrest shook his head. ‘Don’t worry, Grand. It’s no more than you got. We’ll just roll him down the hill a little. And kick him out of the Klavern, of course. His pride’ll be hurt more than anything.’

‘You were telling me about Caleb Tice,’ Grand reminded him.

‘I was,’ Forrest agreed, ‘but I shouldn’t have been. Like I reminded Larry and like I’ll remind Lester Merkel, the first rule of the Klan is absolute secrecy.’

‘But—’

‘There aren’t no “buts”, Grand. Now, you ride away now, y’hear. Because if I see you again, I’ll shoot you like the lying dog you undoubtedly are. Do I make myself clear?’

‘When you met Lafayette Baker,’ Batchelor said, helping himself to more of Belle’s lemonade, ‘at the Old Capitol Prison; was that the first time you’d met him?’

Belle laughed. ‘As a matter of fact, it wasn’t. But you know that from his autobiography. I’ll give you this, James Batchelor, you’re a single-minded man.’

‘Humour me,’ he smiled.

For a moment, on the gentle hills above the French Broad, their eyes met. Then, she lowered her lashes and looked down at her hands, twisting a sprig of wild thyme in her lap. ‘If you remember his narrative,’ she said, ‘I met him at Manassas in the early months of the war. I was posing as a tract-seller – a colporteur we called them in those days. I lied to his face. I told him I was a Yankee sympathizer, with a sister in New York. I offered to pass any letters he cared to write to his friends for him.’

‘And he said?’

She laughed again. ‘You know what he said – “I think I shall see my friends before you do.” Oh, he was good, was Laff Baker. Saw through me like plate glass.’

‘And you next saw him?’

‘About a year later.’

‘In Washington?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Tell me about that.’

Belle poured herself a lemonade and took off her bonnet, laying it on the ground beside her. ‘I told your friend the captain,’ she said.

‘You did.’ Batchelor watched as Belle unpinned her hair and shook it free. The ringlets shone in the high sun and her eyes sparkled. It was difficult to believe that such a lovely girl had led such a chequered life. ‘Matthew and I differ in that he isn’t a natural communicator. I have been telling tales all my life.’

‘Telling tales?’ Belle opened her eyes wide and looked at him in mock horror. ‘But you were a journalist on the Telegraph. Surely, the truth was your watchword, Batchelor?’

‘If you say so,’ he smiled. ‘And perhaps one day you’ll tell me how you know about the Telegraph. But Matthew has no such upbringing, quite the reverse. He’s a Billy Yank to the core. But you know my commission, Belle; anything I can learn about the late Brigadier Baker might be of use.’

‘The tables were turned,’ she said, gazing out over the sluggish waters, low in the banks with the drought. ‘I suspect Baker let himself be captured at Manassas to see what he could learn. I had no choice in Washington. I told him nothing, of course, not even in the bastard’s Room Nineteen.’

‘His torture chamber?’

‘You could say that.’

A silence as thick and black as molasses hung in the stifling air. ‘Tell me about this book,’ Batchelor said, and slid the leather-bound volume from his satchel.

Belle twisted her head to read the title. ‘Colburn’s United Service Magazine! Damn, I’d have given my right hand to set eyes on this a few years back.’ She flicked open the covers and thumbed through the pages. ‘How did you get it?’

‘Baker’s mistress was left it in his will.’

Belle’s eyelids flickered a moment, then she smiled. ‘I’m going to enjoy this tale of yours, James, but what do you say to having something to eat first? Eliza has set us up this lovely basket, and neither of us has eaten a morsel. Poor woman, she’ll be mortified.’

‘I am a bit hungry, now you mention it.’ Batchelor was always hungry; he was a tenement child whose mother occasionally lost count of who had had what when it came to feeding her children, so hunger could well have been his middle name. But he was learning to be careful. ‘Great-Grandma didn’t have a hand in this, did she?’ He knew his mouth would always burn in cold weather, for as long as he lived.

Belle laughed. Great-Grandma’s sauce could always bring a smile to the table. ‘No, just Eliza.’ She peered into the basket. ‘It’s all quite harmless, James, look. Just ham and pickles and biscuits.’

That all sounded very familiar and he took a look. There was a black thing peeking out of a napkin, some jars of beans and some scones, but he knew better than to criticize. ‘Looks delicious,’ he said, bravely. ‘I’ll just have a little of each.’

While she sliced slivers off Eliza’s famous root-beer baked ham and fished out some pickles from a jar, she got back to the case in hand. ‘Was this all Baker left her?’ she asked. ‘I assume Mrs Baker, if there is one, got a tad more?’

‘No doubt she did,’ Batchelor murmured, ‘but isn’t this a slightly odd thing to specify in a will? I mean, a whole library, a gold watch, even the man’s army sabre, but a single book …?’

Belle looked closer. ‘What are these?’ she asked, ‘these pencil marks, circling letters and in the margin?’

‘That’s where I hoped you could help,’ he said. ‘Grand and I have racked our brains over it, but if it’s a cypher, it’s beyond us. Whereas you—’

‘I see.’ She looked at him coldly. ‘So that’s what this picnic is all about. You’re using me, Batchelor. And that’s not kind.’ She slammed the book shut.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Please, Belle.’ And he reached out to touch her hand. She pulled away and he sighed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘In my world you’re a suspect; someone who had good reason to want Lafayette Baker dead. Physically, I know that’s impossible. You weren’t even in the country at the time; but … your past …’

‘Cleopatra of Secession, Siren of the Shenandoah,’ she nodded, pursing her lips. ‘Yes, I know. Even now there are people north of the Potomac who would cheerfully hang me from a wild oak tree.’

James Batchelor, against all his logic, and ignoring the job he had come to do, reached across again and kissed her full on the lips. The Siren of the Shenandoah’s eyes widened in surprise and he felt her lips part slowly. Her hair and skin were warm and soft in the Tennessee sunshine and she went with him as he leaned forward, holding her hands over her head in the tall grass. Then he sat up.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I shouldn’t. You are recently widowed and we hardly know each other.’

She lay still, smiling up at him, her lids heavy over sparkling eyes. ‘And both those things,’ she murmured, ‘would have made this impossible a few years ago, at least this side of the Atlantic. But now? Well, now, I don’t know …’

And he kissed her again.