Despite my best efforts, Sophie remains awake and annoyed: “Have you not got some sort of bedtime prayer to calm yourself?”

“You know I never pray. I don’t believe in incantations. They remind me of the elaborate grace intoned by the bishop in the big priests’ house where Montcalm persuaded me to dine during one of our Sundays of truce. The bishop had twin Indian slaves who’d tried to run away and he’d taken an iron and seared each one’s shoulder with a fleur-de-lys, from which pus oozed at the scab edges. The bishop devoured three roasted snipes. Now there’s a bird with a song worth hearing.”

“Is it in the morning you’re leaving?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Usually there are a few of your socks lying around, but there are none to be seen now.”

Our tent might be damp and even mouldy but suddenly I wish I did not have to leave it.

“And your toothbrush is no longer on the flat rock. I’m inside out with fatigue here, can we just…”

“Are you saying you’re going to miss me?”

“Also, a letter came today for you at the Mission. I have it here.”

“Where’s the flashlight?”

“Look. We both have an early rise…”

“Can’t I read it? Who’s it from?” I hold it up to the filtered lamplight:

JW

Hôtel Le Priori

Rue du Sault-au-Matelot

Québec City

“I dunno. Maybe James Wolfe finally got sick of you impersonating him and has written from his death-scene to tell you to stop.”

“I need the flashlight!”

“Read it in the morning! I’m perishing with fatigue.”

I lie sleepless until the appointed hour.

Around five in the morning I hear someone outside the tent. I draw out my dirk and hold still. I poise the blade and it occurs to me that before I depart for Quebec City I should slice the canvas and cut around Sophie’s painted walrus and fold him up and take him with me in my pocket. She painted him there for guidance, hasn’t she said as much? She’s always implied the walrus might have a teaching for me, but I have heard nothing from it yet that did not in fact come out of Sophie’s own mouth.

As I raise the knife Sophie barks—can the woman see in her sleep? —“Lay it down!”

“I was only…”

“Asshole. Haven’t you stolen enough, with your knives and your guns and your bayonets?”

“I thought you said the walrus was meant…”

“The walrus is not yours for the taking.”