In the room of the dusty piano and unstrung harp someone had rested on a peg a yellow guitar. The window in the music room, which she had not looked at before, revealed an orchestra of beasts: tigers which played flutes; an elephant in charge of an organ; a crocodile with a viola. Perhaps meant to induce laughter, the window seemed decidedly frightful, like an hallucination in infancy. Somewhere else there had been a Noah’s Ark awash on the flood and two golden unicorns left behind. But the lion and the sheep were a product of the dream. Unless it was some clue her sleeping brain had provided.

Maybe Uncle Camillo did not know the way into the tower, had forgotten, or would not say.

A lion devouring a sheep ... the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb... the young lion and the fatling together.... It would be like them to have such a window. And a little child shall lead them.

A child. Where would a child go?

Rachaela raised her head. The naughty child Camillo—playing overhead in the playroom of an attic.

There was sure to be one. Dust and cobwebs and antique toys of the Scarabae when they had been young, centuries before.

She had seen no evidence of a way into an attic. She did not want to go there. If Uncle Camillo was there with his games and keys to the house, to the tower, he must stay undisturbed.

Rachaela waited in her room until she judged by the clocks the hour of luncheon had arrived. Then she went down to the dining room.

Somehow she had known and was not amazed on opening the door. The table was full. Not ten places but surely sixteen. She stood in the doorway and counted them aloud. They raised their old heads of silver and white wire, glanced once with their gunshot eyes.

Rachaela went to the head of the table, which was empty, stood there, and said off all their names that she had heard of, could call to mind, randomly, yet like a schoolteacher checking attendance:

‘Anna, Stephan, Peter, Dorian, Sylvian, Alice, Unice, Miriam, Sasha, Eric, George, Miranda, Livia—’

And when she ceased, like good children, the three she had missed spoke up shrilly:

Teresa.’

‘Jack.’

‘Anita.’

About the room were the other four, Michael and Cheta, Carlo and Maria. The two women were serving cheese omelettes, Carlo saw to the fire, Michael laid down salad.

Their behaviour was insectoid. They had gravitated to this spot like running water. Only Camillo had not come, the one she wanted. Camillo and Adamus, age and youth—for to them Adamus was a boy, and she—she was a baby.

Maria was beside her and began to set extra eating utensils for Rachaela, where she stood at the table’s head.

Rachaela sat down in silence, and ate what was offered her.