Then all of it was rubbed out. He shut his eyes and turned, as if in pain, first on to his back and from there on to his other shoulder. What was he thinking of? Had he forgotten everything? He might make love to a Glasgow orange girl—and no doubt he had been justly served there—but to Emily Frend? He had a moment of rage so sharp and sudden he thought he would shout out, wake them all like one in a fit. No. Not this. Not ever. Tomorrow he must leave them. He would make his excuses (anything would do), ask Ranald to guide him to a ferry crossing. There were islands to the north of this one—he knew that from Captain Browne’s charts. He would get clear. He would keep moving. Or he would go back? Take the Jenny or some other ship back to Bristol, then the London mail. Walk across the parade ground to the colonel’s office and present him with a history of the retreat. His history.

He mouthed to the dark, “They could shoot me.” And he almost revelled in it, the rightness and bitterness of such an ending, the quick slide of last thoughts as he waited for someone (Wood?) to give the command. There was a wall behind the guardhouse in Croydon that had been used for such things in the past. A brick wall splashed with whitewash . . .

In the morning they all seemed to wake at once, sitting up in their beds, a gloss of dew on their faces, their expressions sombre from the strangeness and beauty of the night. They exchanged their dreams. Cornelius had been riding a crocodile. “Was it Father?” asked Jane. Cornelius said it had been, undoubtedly. Jane’s own dream was of Thorpe striding in a river, though whether an English river or a Scottish one she couldn’t say. Emily had dreamed her bed was on the sea and that she had looked back at the island and seen the house.

“Were you alone?” asked Cornelius.

After the briefest pause she said she had been.

“Liar,” said Jane. She looked at Lacroix.

“I didn’t dream,” he said. “I often don’t.”

Cornelius begged for coffee. Emily swung her legs out of bed, stood carefully, and went into the house. After a minute Lacroix also got up, pulled on his boots, buttoned his waistcoat and followed her inside. He went to his room, closed the door and crouched on the floor by his bag. He still had his resolve from the night before, though in daylight it did not feel quite the same, as if it had been made in a language exclusive to the night that now, translated, was less emphatic.