The Oban coach should have left at two o’clock but some trouble with an axle delayed it. For this reason, Emily and Lacroix, reaching the coaching office at a quarter past, were able to buy tickets, though there was only one place left inside. The other passengers looked out with deep interest at the sight of a woman with her head bound in a grey silk scarf. Room was made for her next to the window on the side facing the horses. A man—fatherly, red-faced, slightly drunk—spread a page of the Dundee Courier across the seat, explaining that the windows of coaches could never be made to shut securely and he feared the leather was somewhat damp. Lacroix thanked him, nodded to the woman who was to be Emily’s neighbour, then climbed up the back of the coach to his own place on the roof. There were two others up there. One man was tying on his hat with a ribbon; the other had the look of a poor poet, a man uselessly exulted and who would perhaps, at some point, begin to babble about the moon.
Ten minutes later, the axle declared safe, a horn was blown, and a minute after that they were rattling through the streets of Glasgow, the outside passengers returning the waves of small boys, old men and the city’s population of inebriates and gentle idiots for whom a common coach was a masterpiece of human excitement.
Two hours out of the city they stopped to stretch legs and empty bladders. Lacroix stood with Emily beside one of the coach’s yellow wheels. Was she comfortable? Did she need anything? Had she been able to sleep a little? They had not, since their encounter that morning with the master, had any opportunity for a conversation of the sort both knew must come, and soon. This left them strangely free, all large questions, the answers to those questions (if such existed) postponed until the conclusion of the journey. In the meantime they could simply loiter in the moment. He described a cloud to her. She told him she could hear a blackbird singing.
The coachman rounded them up. They resumed their places. On the roof the poet addressed Lacroix in schoolboy Latin; Lacroix responded (he had schoolboy Latin of his own). The man with the ribbon under his chin talked about the weather. He could, he claimed, smell a change on the way, and though to Lacroix the weather seemed exactly what it had been for hours it turned out the man knew what he was speaking about. The western air began to have a hazy appearance. They passed by coils of smoke, sea-flavoured, that spread and grew denser until the scenery on either side, the grand vistas, was entirely lost in it. In the high places they were above it and looked down at a white sea they would, shortly, plunge into again. Lacroix, gripping his strap, sought to ignore it, the odd spectral loveliness of it. He was concentrating. He was trying to think. And he made good beginnings, recalled in detail the whole of the master’s narrative, examined it with a thoroughness quite impossible when he first heard it, the master staring at him like a one-eyed Torquemada.
But after each good start he came up against what he could not make sense of and he faltered and fell into fancies, and into one in particular in which he advertised his whereabouts in a newspaper—the Dundee Courier?—then went alone, north after north, to Iceland, to Greenland, all the while drawing the master’s assailant after him and away from Emily, from everyone. And then he would wait, sitting in some ice cave, ice crystals in his beard, until he saw, in all that whiteness, the tiny black upright of the monster’s approach . . .
This daydream, ever more detailed, engrossed him for miles and might have done for miles more had the poet not let go of his strap to point at a pink moon rising above the mist’s horizon. His cry of joy turned to a yelp of terror as he tumbled backwards into the luggage basket. He was in the midst of a somersault that would have ended in the road when the man with the ribbon caught the hem of his coat and clung to it until Lacroix found the poet’s hand and together they dragged him back to his place.
I will have to be quicker than that, thought Lacroix. I will need to be more awake. Enough of this dreaming. Live in the world, man!
At half past eleven they were above Oban, though only the church spire showed clearly—an old black piling in a moonlit sea of milk and purple. They descended, were swallowed up, and came to a final halt in the deadened air between rows of ghostly houses and the yardarms of ghostly ships. The coachman held up his lamp, a thumbprint of yellow light. Lacroix and the others on the roof helped hand down the luggage. It was, generally, how outside passengers regained the use of their limbs.
Emily waited with the woman who had sat beside her on the journey. Lacroix, still unsure where in the town they had stopped, asked the way to the Russian Hotel. The Russian Hotel was not its name but everyone, even the poet, knew what he meant, and three or four of them, more familiar with the town or less easily disorientated, pointed the way.
“But you’ll be lucky to find a room,” said the man with the ribbon.
“Why?” asked Emily.
“The ship,” said the man, “the Chiron. Due in three days. The town will be filling up with passengers. Poor devils.”
Lacroix caught only “ship” and “poor devils” but it was enough. He understood. “We shall have to take our chances,” he said. He collected their bags, and with Emily’s hand on his shoulder, started out, aware their backs were being watched, that the moment they were deemed to be out of earshot there must be some discussion of them.
It was not far to the hotel, a ten-minute walk, but they passed on their way a number of small camps, families bivouacking under shelters of canvas or cloth or nothing at all. The more fortunate had small fires in makeshift braziers and by the light of these could be seen men and women and children. The displaced, the chased-off, or those with an uncle or brother in the New World, someone who sent letters about a land that had no end to it and where you would not be robbed by laird or tacksman.
In the hotel parlour the air was a fug of tobacco fumes, and under that the slightly sweet, slightly pissy scent of island tweed. The company was mostly men. One of them was singing and Lacroix thought it was a song he had first heard the night he wandered into the house at the bottom of the hill, the night Ranald sat beside him in his red coat asking if he had come far.
When it was finished, people began to notice the newcomers. They glanced at Lacroix but at Emily they stared. It was as if, in their heightened mood of parting they felt themselves visited by a figure from one of their tales of misfortune, one of their endless tales of misfortune. Lacroix thought he might need to say something—an introduction, an explanation—though feared he would sound like the manager of a fairground sensation, that they would expect him to promise she would tell their fortunes or stand unflinching against a door while he threw knives around her head. Then he saw Spinkey crossing the room in his gear of 1780, and it was clear from the way the Russian held out his arms that he was equal to the moment, that a show of largesse was in the offing, that it would be quietly approved of by the company, and that they would not need to spend the night camping beside the water. He greeted Emily like a fellow exile. He looked at her, held her sightless gaze without a trace of awkwardness, as though his work had somehow habituated him to the appearance of blindfolded women. There was a room. The very last he had. It was on the top floor of the hotel. It was simple, bare. He was ashamed of it. It was where the cats slept. But if they thought such a room would not insult them he could make up a fire, bring up hot water . . .
A girl was summoned, the same one who had shown them to their rooms the last time they stayed, the putative daughter. They went up the stairs with her—the girl first with the candle, then Lacroix with the bags, then Emily holding on to a fold of his coat. Over four flights of stairs she stumbled only twice. The room was, as they had been told, a dormitory for cats. It smelled of cats and of what they had brought up there but it was, otherwise, a perfectly good room with a window that looked out over the harbour. Lacroix, after a certain amount of struggle, got the window to open. They were, on this floor, just above the fog. The moon was directly ahead of him. A fist’s width to the left of it was a star or planet, blue and trembling.
When he looked round into the room an old man was tipping live coals into the fireplace and the girl was flapping her apron at the cats who departed, rubbing the edge of the door with high backs. The fact that there was only one room rather than two, well, it was a fact and they would deal with it later. There was a chair, vaguely French, where a last cat was still asleep. Lacroix thought he could manage on it quite well. The cat could share the bed with Emily.
A candle, a fire, a room. And later, Spinkey himself brought up a tray with two bowls of hot negus, two hard-boiled eggs in their shells, some bread. He apologised again for the room. Lacroix said they were deeply grateful. They had forgotten about the emigration ship. Were all those in the parlour passengers?
“Some are to voyage,” said the Russian, “some to say adieu.”
“Mr. Spinkey,” said Emily, who was sitting on the bed, who looked exhausted, “we need a boat tomorrow. Tomorrow morning.” She told him where they were headed. That the matter was urgent.
“Madam,” said Spinkey, the fixer of all things, the soother, “the people have all been delivered by boats from the islands and the boats must return. There will be no difficulty finding what you need. In the morning I will send out Sasha to ask among the captains.”
He put one of the bowls of negus into her hands. He wanted her to blow on it a little. She did, and sipped from it and swallowed and was very still.
“Vous l’aimez?”
“It is perfect.”
Spinkey smiled, bowed to them both, and left them. They emptied their bowls. Spice, wine, heat. Lacroix peeled an egg by rolling it between his palms. He gave it to Emily and she ate it as though asking questions of it, as though devouring it with curiosity. Because the bed-frame was high, appeared to stand on its tiptoes, her boots did not quite touch the floorboards.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Late,” he said. “Midnight at least.” He squeezed a scrap of bread, made a pellet of it. “Emily,” he said.
She nodded. “You have things you wish to tell me.”
“Things I must tell you. Though now I suppose is the wrong time. You are tired. You should sleep.”
“And delay some more? I am tired, John. But I do not want to wake in the morning without there being some truth between us.”
He was surprised how much the remark distressed him. What of their travelling together? Their wait in the cathedral, the vigils at the hospital? Had there been no “truth” in any of that? For two, three seconds he stared at her, then crossed again to the window. He knew he would not be able to talk while looking at her. The nature of what he had to say, of course. But also the blindfold, that half-yard of grey silk Rizzo had given as a parting gift. Even more than the dressings it had replaced it made her . . . what? Allegorical. A figure from a masque, a pantomime. Like sharing a room with the Oracle of Delphi.
Through the window, through the thinning fog, he could see the flickering of the emigrants’ fires and imagined for a moment the state of their hearts. Then he began to speak.
“Did you follow the war, Emily?”
“You mean did I read about it in the papers? Did people talk to me about it?”
“Yes.”
“I heard things,” she said. “One could not avoid Trafalgar.”
“The business in Spain,” he said, “it was a great . . . muddle. It is not even clear they wanted us there, the Spanish. Certainly I cannot believe they would want us there again.”
“They can manage on their own?” she asked.
“Their what?”
“They can manage alone?”
“No. Not really. They had some success at first but the French have been fighting for years against armies vastly superior to anything the Spanish can put in the field. In Spain you see generals dressed like emperors and soldiers carrying, I don’t know, billhooks from the time of the Armada. It’s not a lack of spirit. They’ve plenty of that. It’s a lack of everything else. And it was not just the army. The whole country. No real order. Bad kings and bad governments. Centuries of it. And then there’s the nature of the physical country. The only decent roads are the ones the Romans left behind them—”
“John?”
“What?”
“Is this what you want to tell me? About the roads?”
He started again. “I went out to Lisbon in the summer. We sailed in convoy from Falmouth, were nearly wrecked in the Bay of Biscay, arrived at the mouth of the Tagus on the 29th of August. I don’t think you’ve been anywhere like that. Lisbon, I mean. I know I hadn’t. Lovely from the water but to walk through the middle of it . . . Heat, stink. Most of the buildings are whitewashed so you can hardly look at them in the full light of day. A church on every street corner, their steps covered with beggars, the beggars covered in flies. Feral dogs. Ten thousand cats that look too thin to be alive but somehow are. For a week we loathed the place, then began to see something else in it. I’m not sure what to call it. You rest your hand on a stone at midnight and the stone is warm. You see a street lined with orange trees and imagine all your life you have been waiting to see exactly that.
“Anyway, our lives were pleasant enough once we grew used to the heat. And my duties were much the same as those I’d had in England. Exercise the horses, drill the men. We went sightseeing. We went to routs. We invented card games. It was not unpleasant at all, though I suppose we were all chafing a little. Soldiers must at least appear as if they wish to fight, so when November came and we received orders to make ourselves ready to go into Spain I remember three or four of our people giving the hunting cry. There was a lot of talk about tactics, fighting spirit, the superiority of our horses, our swords, our guns. It was also when we had our first taste of the confusion that in the end overwhelmed everything. The rains were due, no reliable maps were to be had and no two Portuguese could agree on the best route to the border. To spread the risks the army was divided. I went on the road through a place called Elvas. We had some of the German legion, some dragoons, six batteries of guns. Highlanders too, the 71st, and it was on the road to Elvas I first heard Gaelic spoken, spoken and sung. The intention, as I understood it, was to defend Madrid, but by the time we had any degree of readiness Madrid had fallen, gone without a fight, the government fleeing south as fast as their mule cars would carry them. As for where the various French armies were, what their numbers might be, their dispositions, I had the impression that no one, from General Moore down, really had the least idea, and as the French were equally ignorant about ourselves we were all of us reduced to moving about the country in the hope of hearing something. Thousands of men in bright coats on beautiful horses looking for each other in the rain! And when the rain stopped the snows began. Spain in winter is a cold country, Emily. A cold country and a hard one.
“At last we did stumble across them, the enemy. A dispatch was intercepted and we learned of a body of their cavalry in a town five leagues or so from where the regiment was quartered. We set off at midnight, travelled through the dark, but as we came close we were challenged by one of their patrols and when we reached the town they were ready for us. Heavy dragoons, Chasseurs. It was first light, misty, not like today, but enough to make the ground uncertain. We wheeled into line. The charge was sounded. I was on the far left of the line and after galloping through a vineyard with my sword stretched out ahead and yelling like the best of them I found nothing in front of me but mist and snow. I gave the order left shoulders forward, the one you said I spoke in my dreams that night, but by the time we joined the others it was almost over. The first shock had been enough. The French were scattering. I fired my pistol at one, his back as he was riding away. I missed him, I probably missed him by yards. I don’t think I was sorry for it. They lost above twenty. We lost six. We took prisoners, including a pair of colonels, captured a good many horses, good horses too, none of them less than fourteen hands. It was our great moment. Everyone telling everyone what everyone had seen for themselves. This was what we had come for! This was war! You should have seen us swagger. Well, there was little enough time to enjoy it.
“On Christmas Eve the retreat began. Not back to Portugal as we had hoped but north, into Galicia. We crossed the River Esla on the 28th, reached Bembibre on the 31st, Villafranca on New Year’s Day. The French were never far behind us, Marshal Soult, possibly Bonaparte himself. There were always rumours about him, sightings. The general staff were in a panic and the men were pushed on at a rate they could hardly bear. On one occasion we marched thirty-six hours without pause. Even on horseback that was hard. On foot it must have been torture. We were not equipped for the mountains, not the mountains in winter. Soldiers roamed in gangs hunting for food. We began to view the Spanish as much our enemies as the French. Why did they not help us? Why did they not provide us with what we so desperately needed? The answer of course was that they could not, they had not the means, but that did not stop us from hating them.
“Each morning we left behind those who had not survived the night, and if we buried them at all we buried them in snow. Discipline fell away. People . . . altered. You could see it in their faces, a confusion, as though they were searching for what they might trust in, something to guide them, but everything that could be brought to mind was false, dust, nothing. I cannot say when it started with me. It might have been when I saw the commander of our cavalry led past with his eyes covered much as yours are. He had opthalmia. It was common enough. A trooper was leading his horse by the bridle. They went by in perfect silence. I know I was physically ill by then. I had the flux. I also had violent pains in my head, a neuralgia of some sort, and I had taken to pushing balls of cotton into my ears to stop the wind from piercing them. I have sometimes thought that is the cause of my deafness, that there is still some of the cotton in there. I should have had Rizzo look in with his glass.
“But in the midst of all this we were still giving and receiving orders. I suppose it gave us a sense of things going on as they should, of normality. One evening when my squadron were trying to build shelters at the side of the road, a cornet rode up with a dispatch from Major Leitch to collect stragglers. Collect them and form them into something of a vaguely military character. This was laughable, of course. Completely absurd. The stragglers were the most dispirited, the most afraid, the most desperate. I was to make a fighting body from such men? I think now I could safely have ignored the order. I doubt anyone would ever have known or cared. But a soldier who does not obey orders has ceased to be a soldier at all and it seemed I was not quite ready for that. So I stayed. The army marched away and for a while I was entirely alone, a horseman on a road of churned snow, the last man in Spain. How long I was to wait there had not been specified. An hour? Two? And what if instead of British stragglers it was the French vanguard that came over the rise? I even began to wonder why they had chosen me for such a duty. Was it a recognition of my competence? Or was it that I was considered the most dispensable? The officer they could most easily do without?
“Then the first of them appeared, four men, bowing into the wind, shuffling. They did not see me until they were almost upon me and when they looked up they looked up like children. Was I there to save them or to kill them? Others came. Men with beards, boys who could not have grown a beard had their lives depended on it. Some of them called up their names, their regiments. No two seemed to be from the same outfit. I am not even sure they were all British, that I didn’t have some of General Romano’s men. You couldn’t tell from the uniforms because there weren’t any, or rather there was a complete muddle of uniforms, anything at all as long as it gave some protection against the cold. One man had on the brass helmet of a French dragoon. God knows where he found it. I thought of telling him to take it off but I didn’t. I couldn’t be bothered. I didn’t care.
“In all I collected close to thirty. Some still had weapons. Most could have done nothing but throw snowballs at the French. It had been common practice for some time to use musket stocks for firewood. Well, I formed them into a column and we set off in search of the army. It was not that far ahead of us, couldn’t be, and the sooner I caught up with it the sooner I could be rid of my charges. It was necessary however to keep stopping. Had I not done so I would soon have had to commence the whole business over again. So we stopped every hour then every half-hour, all the while widening the gap between us and the army. The snow came horizontally. I remember leaning on my horse’s neck trying to see the road. I had no sense of progress, no notion of our coming closer to anything other than our own extinction. For three days we went on like this. Three days does not sound like a long time but to us it began to seem we had never known any other and never would. Some gave up, walked into the forest or lay in the snow to sleep. Others joined us, fell in with the column. I followed the road and they followed me, their officer. Not out of any respect or fear. There was nothing of either. Very likely they followed because I was on a horse and had I toppled off the horse, as I often thought I might, they would have taken my boots, my cloak, left me where I was, dead or dying. I would not have blamed them. I would have understood . . . ”
He let himself falter, let his gaze settle again on the moon, which had slid perceptibly westwards since he started to speak. Behind him in the room he could hear nothing. Was she asleep? Was he confessing to a sleeping woman? A sleeping woman and a cat? He could look round but he chose not to. To start all this again, later, tomorrow, the day after—an intolerable thought.
“At dusk on the fourth day we came to the village. I had sent off some of the stronger people as scouts, more for form’s sake than out of much hope they would find anything useful. But they came back with news of the village and we turned off the road towards it. It is a place called Morales. Hard to believe you’ll find it on any maps. A church, a square with an old twisted tree in the centre, perhaps thirty houses. They did not welcome us. It may be they thought we were the French, though most had not stayed to find out. By then the snow had stopped and I could see a score of them disappearing into the treeline above the village, men and women, running away. Well, it turned out, of course, they were very wise. There was a moment then, I believe there was, when I might have called the men to me, drawn them up in the square, spoken to them, reminded them we were there on sufferance, that these people were our allies, that property was sacred. I did nothing of the sort, of course. I rode to what seemed one of the better houses, rode up to the front door, knocked with my boot, received no answer, dismounted, went around the back of the house, tried the door there, pushed at the shuttered windows and finally discovered one I could force. It was dark in there, silent. I don’t know what sort of room I’d climbed into, I couldn’t see enough of it, but I felt my way to a door and through it into another room where there were the embers of a fire. Immediately I looked for something to burn on it. There was probably a wood store under the eaves but I wasn’t going outside again. I broke up a stool by swinging it against the floor. Furniture usually burns well, that was one of the lessons of the retreat. I laid the pieces on, they caught. Soon there were flames, beautiful flames, and the room took shape around me. There was a table where the family must have been eating when news of our arrival reached them. Three plates on the table, meals abandoned before they had been quite finished. Beans, bread, oil. I tugged off my gloves with my teeth, picked up the first plate and stood there scraping the food into my mouth with my fingers. It was a reprieve, a marvel. I was, quite suddenly, intensely happy. An hour earlier the world appeared determined to be rid of me. Now it had reached out to save me.
“I was still eating when I heard the first shots. I listened of course. I may even have stopped chewing for a few seconds. But the shots were irregular and seemed only to come from one place. I did not think it was contact with the enemy. Apart from anything else neither we nor the French were much inclined to fight in the dark. So I went on with my supper then got on my knees to search the floor for what might have been dropped. I hope you can picture that. The captain of hussars snuffling like a dog under the table. But soon there was a new disturbance and harder to ignore. The main door of the house opened into the room I was in, or would have done had it not been barred on the inside. A fist hammered at the wood, a voice called out for me. Sir! Sir! Sir! I kept silent but he kept knocking, kept calling. In the end I realised the only way to get rid of him was to ask who he was and what he wanted. He said he was Thompson. I recalled him, just about. A boy soldier and among the first who came to me along the road. He said that the others had gone berserk. Or they had gone mad. I forget the exact word he used. He had seen them shoot a man, a villager. He had seen them taking women away. He feared they intended to set the church alight. None of this amazed me. None of it, I think, meant anything to me at all. I called back that he should stay out of their way, that I would come and see for myself. He begged me to come soon and I assured him I would.
“When I was certain he had gone I climbed out from under the table. I stood, drew my sword, and started poking the thatch above the rafters. We knew this was one of the places they liked to hide things, the Spanish. It was always good to search there. And sure enough, after walking up and down the room a few times stabbing the straw I had a success. I punctured a wineskin. It startled me. I thought I had run through something living. Then I could smell what it was and stood beneath the stream and opened my mouth. I washed my face in wine, it ran into my eyes, but most of it I managed to get down my throat. I could still hear shots, and there was some shouting, but it wasn’t directly outside, it wasn’t close. When I had drunk all I could I lay by the fire, as near to it as I dared. I can hardly tell you the pleasure I felt. The warmth of the fire, the warmth of the wine. I slept. I have no idea for how long. It might only have been ten or fifteen minutes but had I not been woken by more beating at the door I would, I suppose, have slept on until the French arrived or the householder came back to wake me with the edge of his axe.
“It was the boy again, Thompson. He was more urgent now, his voice shrill. I hated him. I wished him dead. But at last I got to my feet, went to the door and unbarred it, my one honourable act of the entire campaign. The instant the door was open I could see the fires. The houses had thatched roofs and even with snow on them they burned well. The light must have been visible for miles. Well, I was sober enough then, sober and awake. The boy ran, I followed. He led me along the edge of the village to a large house beside the track we had come in by. The door was open and we went inside. It was a room much like the one I’d been sleeping in, though this, I remember, had a large crucifix on one of the walls. The men were in there, about half our company. A few of them carried burning sticks, though most of the light came from the flames on the roof of the house opposite. They were gathered in a circle and in the centre of the circle were two chairs. On one of these a girl was standing. She had on a petticoat but above her waist she had nothing and had crossed her arms to cover herself. On the other chair, a little behind her, was a soldier with a pair of shears, sheep shears, I think, though they might have been for cloth. He was cutting off the girl’s hair, cropping it close to her scalp, one hand working the shears, the other holding her head still. Most of her hair had already gone, black hair in a pile on the floor, enough to stuff a bolster with. Her eyes were shut. She did not weep or call for help. She had withdrawn herself, had sent her spirit away somewhere.
“The men, when I first went in, were rapt. They had foolish grins on their faces and yet they looked horrified. As they became aware of me, my presence, so their expressions changed. They started to be uneasy and looked about themselves like people waking from a dream. But not the soldier on the chair, not him. He was one who had joined us the previous day, met us on the road, alone. He had been wearing a greatcoat then. Now he had taken it off and I could see his tunic and his corporal’s stripes. When at last he did look at me it was because he was ready, because he chose to. Looked, looked away, went on with his cutting.
“It was Thompson who shouted that he should stop. The girl on the chair was probably his own age. I’d say she was. And it was that, the boy’s protest, that finally woke in me some sense of duty, of decency. I made to draw my sword only to realise I had left it in the house where I had slept. My pistol, thank God, I did still have and I would have been entirely within my rights to have used it on him. He was only a few feet away, I could hardly have missed. He looked at me again. I think he was surprised though he was careful not to show it. He brushed some hair from the girl’s shoulders, dusted it away. Here, he said, is one who will remember the British army. Only then did he come down.
“I ordered them out, all of them, told them the French would be on us at first light. Thompson hung on my sleeve asking about the girl. She was still on her chair. He wanted me to do something for her. I made some promise or another, shook him off, went back for my horse. I didn’t go into the house for my sword and so lost it, itself a shameful thing to confess. But there was more, there was more. When I rode into the square I saw, by the light of the burning church, the use they had put the tree to. Firelight on bare feet, bare feet floating a half-yard off the ground. I did not stop to count them. I did not want to risk seeing their faces. I did not even look round to see if the others were following me. For the villagers watching from the hill I must have looked like Death himself riding out of the village.
“After that . . . well, after that nothing matters very much. The last forty-eight hours into Corunna I walked. My horse had gone lame and the ball I should have put through the corporal I put through the animal’s head. I did not take part in the battle where General Moore was killed. I was already in the transports in the bay, delirious. Two weeks later, having failed to die, I was at Plymouth. Some time after that, though I have no recollection of it, I was delivered to my house in Somerset where our servant, Nell, tended me with a devotion entirely at odds with what I merited. I recovered. I could not quite keep myself from it—from life, from living. The name I assumed, Lovall, belonged to a blameless young officer who died of a fever on the road out of Portugal. I hope to God I have not disgraced that name, though I suppose I have. I must have. Even more, I fear I have disgraced you and your family. By association, I mean. Certainly I seem to have put you all in danger, though who he is, this Henderson, what he wants of me, why he has pursued me here, that I still do not understand. It is to do with Morales of course, it cannot be otherwise. Some sort of reckoning. Anyway, I have a scheme of sorts. I was piecing it together on the coach today. I will find the means to make my presence known to him. I will advertise myself and draw him away. Away from you, your family, from everyone. He will have no reason to trouble you then. And you will be free of me, Emily. Your life, I think, was a good life before I—”
She stopped him, mid-sentence, with a touch. He had not heard her cross the room. She was standing directly behind him, had walked up the sound of his voice and found him. She had her fingers on his shoulders, then she leaned her head against his back, her forehead pressing between his shoulder blades. When she spoke her voice was a trembling in his chest. What he heard, and he heard it clearly—the connective power of bones and blood—was like the speaking of his own heart.
“I do not know how to judge any of this. It is not for me to judge it. I suppose you must go on living with it somehow. But I do not feel disgraced by knowing you. Nor do I wish to be free of you. I began to love you as John Lovall. I shall love you still as John Lacroix.”
He guided her to the bed. She sat and he unlaced her boots, took them off, took off his own. They lay on the bed together holding hands. He tried to think back to the day’s beginnings; it was like trying to think back to his own infancy. On the ceiling the light moved like water, was restless as water. He heard her say he could kiss her if he wished to. Or that he should? He propped himself up, looked at her, could not quite shake the feeling she looked back at him through the silk. Her lips were dry at first and tight, as were his own. Kissing was a strange thing to do, awkward. Then his hand found one of her breasts, seemed to stumble over it, and through the cloth, through layers of cloth, he felt the hard, impersonal life of her. After that it was easy. A mutual falling, the grief of appetite. And in between the touching, the tender manoeuvres, the new knowledge, he had calm thoughts, grammatical, useful, and remembered even when it was over. One was, what I have done in Spain I cannot make good, and telling it changes nothing. Another was, she does not especially mind what I have done, is not, perhaps, particularly interested. It is what she expects of soldiers. A third—she knows more about this thing we are doing than I.
He must have cried out at the end. There was a shattering of china. The cat had been on the table drinking the dregs of the negus and had been startled into a clumsy jump.
“He’ll want letting out,” said Emily.
“Want what?”
“Letting out, John. The cat.”
He got off the bed and crossed the boards to the door. He was wearing only his shirt and a single woollen stocking, ravelled round an ankle. As soon as the door was open the cat darted past him. The stairs were dark, the hotel silent. He waited there, hanging on with some sense of offering himself as a target to whatever—whoever—might be standing in the throat of the stairs. But it was only a game; he had no intention of sacrificing himself. He shut the door, worked home the little bolt, snuffed the candle and went back to her.