The Spanish officer returned to his pillar, his smoking. Now that Calley had heard his voice he felt a new interest in him, and turning himself a little, shifting on the block of dressed stone he was using for a seat, he observed the man without seeming to. It was his habit, when looking at any stranger, to think first of how, in a fight, he would overcome him. His own build was slight—you do not grow tall, do not grow broad shoulders living as he had lived as a boy. Despite this, there were very few he thought he could not take, if only because of his willingness to start at a pitch most had no stomach for. He was not a fantasist. He had put himself to the test many times. The Spaniard, he was sure, would give him no trouble. But that voice. He had liked that voice. An accent, though not a strong one, not like those among them you could make no sense of even when they were speaking fluent English. He wondered if he might ask him for a cigar. Not wise, of course, to ask a British officer for a smoke, not wise at all, but Spanish officers were men in fancy dress. They did not need to be treated with the same care.

He was pondering this, picking his words, when he felt himself observed in turn, and flicking his gaze to the side he saw that it was the woman with the child. She looked down the moment he caught her, stared at the ground from beneath thick black brows. It did not trouble him, or it did not trouble him greatly. To her, surely, one English soldier was very like another. Even so. He stood up and walked to where, in the wall by the steps, water trickled into a basin. On the tiles above the basin there were images of birds in a kind of paradise. A tin scoop hung from a peg. He filled the scoop with water and walked over to the bench where the woman was sitting. Her head was covered with a cloth, a scarf, but from under its folds flowed a heavy plait of black hair that lay like a fish tail across her right breast. Only when he stood above her, did she look up at him. He offered her the scoop. He even leaned down a little so she could look hard into his face, so that she could not avoid it.

“Go on,” he said. Then a word they all knew, “Agua.”