He went in through the kitchen door. Emily, on hands and knees, was cleaning the floor. No servants then. She looked up at him. He wondered if he should offer to help her stand but she got to her feet without difficulty. He said he had been down to the sea, hoped he had made himself more presentable.

“You will miss your wild self,” she said. She stepped closer. It was evident to him now that there was something amiss with her eyes. She must, he thought, come close to see me well, as I must have her close to hear her. She lifted a hand as if to touch him, but stopped short. “Is that shirt wet?” she asked.

He said it was and that he did not have another. He told her, briefly, the reason for it.

“Cornelius’s shirts will be too small,” she said. “But ask Jane if she will allow you one of Thorpe’s. She keeps them like relics but you must make her give you one.”

He nodded, bit back the question as to why Jane would have Thorpe’s shirts, why she would treat them like relics. “And where might I find her?”

“She will be in her room upstairs,” said Emily. “It is the door painted with the dove and the owl.”

He went up. The stairs were almost as steep as the steps up to the hatch on the Jenny. At the top was a corridor lit by a window overlooking a patch of garden, the garden enclosed by a stone wall that did not look high enough to keep much out, not even hens.

The first door he came to was a plain white door but on the next he found the owl and the dove. They were, undoubtedly, the work of the same artist who had painted the horsemen in the room below. The dove, he thought, was particularly well done, though there was something farcical in the pairing, the owl too large for the bough, the dove somewhat in love with itself.

He knocked. A voice invited him to enter (he was fairly sure it did), but going in he found the window curtained and the room in twilight. The air was warm, scented, slightly stale. Clothes, some glimmering like flowers at dusk, were heaped over the back of a chair. The bed, twice the size of the one Cornelius had been sleeping in, took up nearly half the room. He could see her head clearly enough, her hair spread over the pillow, one plump arm curled on the covers.

“Your sister,” he began, “thought you might be kind enough to give me the loan of one of Mr. Thorpe’s shirts. Just until this one of mine is washed and dried. I was careless enough to be robbed of my bag in Glasgow. The one with the shirts in. But I will return at a more convenient time.”