It was a comment on his delicate health, perhaps, but even then the thought occurred to me that such a boy might outlive his father if their enemies chose to shoot the father first. A reign of a minute if they paused to reload, a dozen breaths.

It hung there between us. Fate. A heavy hand upon our shoulders. My question had put it there.

I wondered what I might do to spare him further such thoughts, and his medals caught my eye. I asked him to tell me about them. There were four. Three were commemorative – one, indeed, issued for the centenary of their 1812 war. These were bronze but the medal he wore on the far right was silver. He told me it was a medal of Saint George and awarded to him for bravery while coming under fire during an inspection of the front. It had his father’s face on it.

For a moment, it occurred to me that here was a twelve-year-old pretend corporal who had never fired a shot but been decorated for being close to action on a day when, no doubt, soldiers gave their lives for no ribbon at all. But it was unkind to judge the boy for that, and perhaps he had indeed been brave.

He then asked me to tell him about my time as a boy in the navy, the Union Navy.

What did you tell him?

I’ll tell you exactly what I told him. Or what I believe I told him. It was some years ago, of course, and I was more intent on recording what he had to tell me. I made something of a story of it, to keep it interesting, while at the same time keeping faith with the facts.

I told him that at fourteen, early in the war, I had cut timber that contributed to the hulls of five gunboats of the Unadilla class, but the time came to make a greater contribution. I even saw those gunboats during my service, two of them at least, and fought alongside one – the USS Kennebec – at Mobile Bay. It was conversations with my grandfather that determined me to enlist. Though he lived in New Brunswick then, in Canada, he was a patriotic Union American to the last.

Maine provided many soldiers to the war, and some sailors, and I decided to join the navy as I felt I had already been building their ships. To my surprise, I found myself in the company of men who were there because the pay was better than army pay and the navy had promised to show them more of the country. I suggested to the Tsarevitch that, when he moved his soldiers around on the battlefield, weighing up the decisions of generals, he might sometimes remind himself that not all the thoughts of soldiers are noble or on military objectives. Even a patriot might think also of food and the cold and sending money home.