Then the head was back, the head, a face looking in at the window’s edge, but it was the wrong edge for any easy view of Emily and Lacroix. He did not see them, or if he did he gave no sign of it. He dropped away. Lacroix crawled back to his place under the window, took up the pistol and bit into one of the cartridges. He had recognised that neat and narrow face perfectly well, for though they had been in company together only a short time—hours more than days—it was a face he would remember for as long as he remembered the village of Los Morales. Not Henderson though. Never that. His name—the one he had called up in a clear voice from the frozen mud of the road that day—was Calley. Corporal Calley. Calley who cropped girls’ heads so they would not forget the British army.

He tapped powder into the pan, closed the frizzen, tipped the remaining powder into the barrel, dropped in the ball, pushed in the cartridge paper with his thumb. He could not get the ramrod loose. He let it alone, breathed, tried again, freed it. He thrust paper and ball down into the breech, swung the rod back to its place beneath the barrel. Prised the hammer to full cock.

Emily had raised her left hand. She was pointing to the wall dividing the room they were in from the big room. He watched her. For two or three seconds he had no idea what she was doing, then he understood. Slowly, her finger moved in the direction of the door, stopped, and moved back towards the stairs. Then up, up, until she was pointing to the ceiling. Lacroix thought he heard the complaint of a board in the corridor but it was Emily’s finger he trusted in now. When she drew it back along the ceiling to the top of the stairs he got to his feet, went to her and, as gently as he could, raised her off the chair. As she stood, her shoulder knocked the guittar and it gave out a small, sighing echo of its strings, a ghost chord. He walked her to the centre of the room. For a moment her hands hung idle—she had lost him—then she raised her right hand and traced a line back down the stairs.

“Captain Lacroix, sir? I think you are hereabouts somewhere, sir. I have a message for you. It won’t take long. A military matter. From the top. Very pressing.”

He was, according to Emily’s finger, speaking from near the bottom of the stairs, somewhere between the stairs and Cornelius’s room.