At the top of the steps, beside a heaped pyramid of coal, a watchman was busy lighting his stove (he would not want for fuel). No one, it seemed, had noticed the arrival of a stranger, a figure in green, bags in hand, walking up from the stink and complications of the river, though for Lacroix himself the change was everything. For ten days he had been carried. Now he must carry himself. He had been at sea and hidden, like Crawley. Now he was among people again, out in the open.

He walked to the bridge, reaching the roadway just as a troop of cavalry approached, thirty men or so in blue jackets, the horses coming on at a smart walk. He stepped back, watching them from beside the coal. They were dragoons—militia, not regulars—but well turned out, on good mounts. A gang of boys ran beside them and he felt some envy of the men, guessed at the pleasure they took in crossing the bridge, the lamplight rippling off buttons and scabbards. At the same time it was unsettling to come across them so short a time after stepping ashore, as though the whole of Britain had become a barracks. It would be difficult soon to be of serviceable age and walk about out of uniform without being challenged.

He waited until the woollen comb of the last trooper’s helmet was over the brow of the bridge, then slowly followed them. The city ahead was as unknown to him as Lisbon had been. He saw the masts of shipping, the silhouettes of spires, industrial chimneys. Beside the last lamp on the bridge he stopped to look at the houses along the northern quays for a place he might stay. He did not want to find himself in some sailors’ rest home or the sort of lodgings where the rooms were had by the hour. The better places, the more genteel, would, he decided, be tucked away, withdrawn a little from the bustle of the waterside. A clean room in a quiet house! Clean bedding, a view of the sky, a bed he could stretch out in. That would do. And when he found such a place he might stay for a week—why not?—come to know the city, write sane and comforting letters to Lucy. (My Dearest Sister, I have found Lodgings very much to my taste, not at all expensive, and spend my mornings in leisurely strolls during which I discover much that is both charming and instructive . . . )