In the courtyard there were only the horses for company, the horses and the flies. He settled himself in the shade, his back to the cool of the wall, his shako on his lap. The air seemed to hold the echo of voices, his own among them. Then he heard bells again, and what sounded like a woman singing. He shut his eyes. Someone, he thought, someone like that cunt Henderson, could come down now and shoot him in the face and they could throw his body in the sea tonight. He often pictured such things. Assassinations, ambushes. How to set them, how to foil them. The one you couldn’t foil. That one. He slept anyway—the walk out of the mountains was no distant memory. It had taken it out of him, drained off, he supposed, some of the vital fluids. But even in sleep he was vigilant and when he felt the weight of a man’s shadow on his face he was on his feet in an instant, nicely tensed. It was the Spanish officer, Medina. “The fuck,” said Calley.

The officer smiled. Rather than a blade he was holding out a small, fragrant box.

“Un puro?”

Calley took one, rustled it between his fingers, sniffed it. Medina let him light it from the tip of his own cigar, then they sat together, side by side, smoking.

“So where’d you learn to speak English?” asked Calley.

“My family are in the wine trade. We have sent wine to England for three generations. My grandfather was even married to an Englishwoman, Doña Anna, and when I was a small boy I would visit her and she would speak to me in English. But I learned the language from my father and from the English who work in the town. In Cordoba. It is a part of our business. We must know it.”

“So you’ve been there then?”

“England? No. I was to go for the first time in the same month General Dupont crossed the Pyrenees. I decided England must wait for a while.”

“And you joined up. Bought yourself a commission.”

“I have an uncle in the regimiento El Rey. As a favour to my father . . . ” He made a little movement with his hand. The clearing of a path, the flowing of a river.

“See much action?”

“Not, I think, as much as you.”

“But you like it, do you? Soldiering?”

“Not, I think, as much as you.”