He tolerated it. Much like you, I suspect. He got a laugh out of the ending. George Washington’s teeth. Soon after, he took his watch out to show me, since my story had had a watch in it. His was gold too, naturally, but almost new. It had the Romanov crest etched into its hunter case, with gemstones as highlights. Those people he had not seen at dawn could have been fed for years by the sale of it, and I wondered if I should have woken him then after all. It was just a watch to him. He was only showing me to pass the time. Everything was to pass the time, and to stop feeling our worst fears.

When I returned from another walk around our railcar, he had a deck of playing cards out. English cards. He told me Russian decks had a different number of cards. He asked if I would like to play whist, but I told him I was unfamiliar with the game, having not seen it played until I saw him with Hanbury. It turned out he had already begun to teach his bodyguards and together we made up a foursome, as strange a foursome as has ever played whist, I imagine – two Russian sailors and a retired United States senator, all three with guns in their coats, being led through the game in two languages by a boy born to rule half the world but now unwittingly escaping it on a railroad to Bergen.

This game of whist occupied much of the afternoon, into twilight at least. Later, the Tsarevitch made the cards a parting gift, and told me I should teach the game to more Americans. I still have them, though I had to buy myself a copy of Cavendish on Whist, to be sure I was teaching it correctly.

We arrived at Torneo and the border that night. The Tsarevitch was lying in his sleeper by then. He had done some reading but had turned in, knowing we would have another train to transfer to and that he would be woken when the time came.

After all that moving, any kind of stop feels sudden, and it brought him out of his room in a hurry, not properly awake and saying, ‘What’s happening, Uncle Secretary?’ – his voice full of concern. It made me wonder if the entire day had been a mask. All the talk, the games. That he had contrived a sense of ease as much as I had, and knew the world better than I had realised.

‘Nothing, my boy,’ I told him. ‘The border with Sweden. Nothing more.’

He stared out the window, at a locomotive being prepared on a siding. It had a full tender and no railcars attached. It was all black, with the number 293 on the front in white, above a strip painted red.