The man held up a finger. He began to move his head so as to make the ship travel an imaginary sea, to make her roll and pitch on the swell. The others at the table heckled him, blew noisily at the little sails. The man was not distracted. He was used to it. He went on, dipping his head, tilting it, until Lacroix, staring at the ship, no longer saw the man’s head at all . . .

Once it was over, Lacroix felt in his coat pocket for coins. Their audience—for the show now had become both of them—waited to see what he would give and when he gave it there was laughter, as if the man had cheated him. He did not feel cheated. He shifted closer to the man. He wanted him to start again, wanted this time to try to hear his story, for he had some idea it would instruct him, and that if he could gather things—could gather, specifically, the last twelve months of his existence—into a story of his own, he could, if it was demanded of him (when?), provide an account of himself that would satisfy. He would be coherent. He would make sense. Was that not how stories served us? But before it could begin again a child appeared at his shoulder and in an accent that came from somewhere up the country, told Lacroix the Jenny would sail within the hour and that Captain Browne wished him to come aboard at once.

He stood, steadied himself against the table. Brandy on an empty stomach. Brandy in the system of a man who was less strong than he had been. He followed the boy outside. The day was bigger than he had left it, more uncontained, more real. He blinked, then noticed the slick surface of the cobbles and realised it was raining. Ahead of him, the boy, on bare feet, was threading the crowd but Lacroix stopped and turned up his face to feel the rain. He was still there, tilt-faced, the skin of his brow and cheeks growing brighter, when he felt his sleeve tugged, and looking down saw it was the man from the Star, his ship now sheltered under an umbrella of tattered yellow silk.

“What?” asked Lacroix.

The man smiled. In his free hand he held out the gunsmith’s parcel. Lacroix stared at it a moment as though he could not understand how it had got there, could not understand at all. Then he took the parcel and placed it under his coat to keep it dry.

“Thank you,” he said.

TWO

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