‘He understands.’

‘Inspector too, is he?’

‘Musician, sir.’

‘Quite right. Mine’s a poet, blasted ingrate. Wish he’d write a good Romance. But then there’s no telling them, is there.’

‘No, sir.’

He looked startled at my answering what was apparently not a question. ‘Get yourself settled in, there’s a good man.’

I was shown to my modest tent by a trooper. He seemed a dutiful young man, and I was grateful when he insisted on seeing to the care of the mare. He went to commend her on her good behaviour, but stopped short and looked at me expectantly. I realised I had no idea what the horse was called. There was no indication about her person, no name tag or label on the saddle. I saw no alternative but to re-christen her. For a dark moment I considered calling her Jan, to remind me of my duty, but that would have been utterly selfish and in poor taste.

‘Tabitha,’ I said to both horse and trooper. The mare flicked her tail against a horde of flies, and it was settled.

I ate a small supper of bread, cheese, and a handful of dried fruit. The smell of cooking meat was pervasive in the camp, but I had neither the strength nor the inclination to eat among others. As the sky began to lighten, I chewed a sensible amount of ettiene and slept soundly, hoping to ease Alexsander’s travels.

16th October 1721

He rode all day in the rain.

I woke stiff and aching. When I tried to stand, my legs buckled and I fell awkwardly against the side of the tent. Muscles I did not realise I even had were complaining the loudest, and were only quietened after a good deal of stretching. With difficulty I made my way out of the tent.

Someone other than Alexsander had taken care of the horse. I left her at rest and went in search of breakfast. Though the night before I disdained the soldier’s spits, now I had a hunger great enough to tear the very leg from a pig and eat it raw. Fortunately, the covered mess area required the less visceral but no less heroic feat of queuing in a line of similarly afflicted men and women.

I caught snippets of their muttered conversations, mostly concerning the weather – both of that night and the nights to come as the regiment moved south. Few were looking forward to a winter posting.

‘I wouldn’t worry,’ a woman ahead of me said to her companion, ‘we’ll be plenty warm. The King’ll stir the hornet’s nest and we’ll march so far south we’ll be fighting in nothing but our britches!’

None of the King’s soldiers shared his interest in the lands of the southern tribes, with its hot swamps and thick jungle. His sanity was called into question in numerous and colourful ways, some of which included descriptions of His Majesty’s imaginary friends, his desire to own every copy in existence of his favourite play, and his roaming the palace halls naked. Another popular suggestion was that the King’s interest in the tribes was purely to sate his personal desire for young, fair-haired boys. But then the talk descended into a broader, directionless sort of bawdiness.