They walked until they came to a square, or not a square but a field with buildings on three sides, and on the open side the masts of shipping. There was a market in progress. Black cattle wandered around quite freely. There were horses, ponies, sheep. Among the animals, among and between the knots of men in deep discussion about the animals, there were stalls selling hats and blankets, tin kettles, knives with carved handles. Also food. He found himself in front of a stall (two planks over two trestles) that sold smoked fish. The fish were split, looked like leather and had a rich savoury reek to them. They were not big. He bought two, gave one to the boy and began immediately to eat the other, scraping with his teeth at the bones, eating the small bones, making his mouth bleed again, swallowing blood and fish and ash. A dozen yards from the fish stall was a whisky tent and he hurried into it. He was in pain; the pain had no novelty now; he wanted it to stop. Inside the tent the ground was churned. No one seemed to mind or notice his bare feet. They served the drink in cups of horn. He shook some drops from the druggist’s bottle into the whisky, red swirls uncoiling, dispersing. He drank it and went into the market again. The boy was waiting for him, his fish in his hand. He had not forgotten his errand. He guided Lacroix through a flock of sheep to a structure of canvas and boxes, the sketch of a shop. On top of the boxes were displays of footwear. They were all seconds, thirds, fifths. Farmer’s boots, soldier’s boots. Some looked as though they had no more than a week of walking left in them.

He was not the only barefoot man among the customers. Another, older, winked at him as though to acknowledge a shared ambition. Lacroix blinked back. The drug was spreading through him like a venom. He was not entirely new to opium, had taken Dover’s Powders several times and thought Nell had given him something when he was first back at the house. But this was more complete. Turkish opium. It had its own throb. He stood stock-still, breathed the market in, breathed it out. If he clapped his hands he thought everyone would take to the air like flies from carrion.

He tried on a pair of clogs. He tried on a pair of sheepskin boots he thought Caractacus might have worn. In the middle of the stall he had a vision of his own boots. They were standing, somewhat proudly displayed, on an upturned tea-chest. He reached out for them, touched the leather, the creases. They were his boots. The thieves had not even bothered to brush off the dust from the struggle. He sank an arm inside them but the money was gone. Of course it was gone.