Curado had watched and been disturbed by Marta’s tribal instincts. At the estancia, she’d been baptised and taught the Lord’s Prayer and had always sat piously in the chapel while the priest swung the censer and splashed holy water with the aspergillum. But water couldn’t penetrate skin. Could God even penetrate souls?

The boy was quiet. When Marta lifted him to the other breast, he cried, wriggled and kicked, desperate, then softened the instant her nipple was between his lips. Fourés couldn’t account for the strength of his new love and desire for Marta.

‘If you need anything, Michel . . .’ Curado said (they called each other by their first names now). He smiled, almost sadly, paused at the door and then knocked for the guard to let him out.

In the weeks and months following, the général wrote Elisabeth many letters. He tried to capture in words all that had happened to him. He wrote and rewrote and read them over, but was unable to say one thing with certainty. Everything was true, but so much seemed to be missing, as though each word had only empty sky around it. The words wouldn’t hold still, no matter how hard Fourés concentrated and firmly pledged them with the truth. His hammer slid from every nail head, struck none of them cleanly.

He tried to imagine Elisabeth before him, sitting in the chair, and wrote as he would have spoken to her, but all that fell to nonsense too.

Silence seemed to hold the only semblance of what his heart held: but what in God’s name was a silent letter? He was a fool (of this he was certain).

Général Fourés tore up all the letters and threw them away.

Marta saw the strips of paper and wondered what they were. She knew only that her général frowned when he wrote them. It was best they were burned.

DREAMS OF CHINA

It was the Irish who said that China was nearby and it didn’t matter that Johannes Meyer knew otherwise and said so.

‘Been there before, right?’ they said, and snarled at him, each man clinging desperate to the plan, for without China there was nothing but the impossible years lined up ahead and beyond.

‘It’s in the northern hemisphere,’ Johannes said. ‘This is the southern.’

‘So it’s just up the road a ways.’

Johannes had no idea of the wider geography of the world he’d been brought to, but considering how long it’d taken to sail here, he couldn’t see a short walk to anywhere.

‘You’ll need water,’ he said, ‘food.’

‘Yeah, well, the main thing is we won’t be needin’ you.’

(Laughter.)