What emerges looks (even to me, after days of familiarity) like nothing so much as a man’s face, denuded of bone and cured by a tanner. The eyes are brass-rimmed disks of glass. Where nose and mouth are to be expected, the face grows a proboscis, long and limp like a wet sock. At the far end, this snout is weighted down with something very much like the head of a watering can. For a moment a gust of wind catches the mask and fills its features with volume; then the rubber inverts and the thing hangs dead from the man’s fingers.

“What is it? Some kind of mask?”

I find the semblance of my normal voice, brittle at its edges.

“A respirator. Chap called György came up with it. A Hungarian inventor. He wished to design something that would protect soldiers from the madness of battle. It filters out Smoke. Trouble is, you can hardly breathe in it. And who ever said soldiers should be sane?” I hesitate, watch the mask watch me from brass-rimmed goggles; each breath of breeze a hint of life within its rubber cheeks. “But, you see, it works differently now. A family friend made alterations.”

The Irishman, however, has already lost interest in my explanation and picked up the drinks bladder that was stashed alongside the mask. It’s heavier than he expected, the bladder’s neck hanging flaccid from his fist; the bottom swollen like a woman’s rump. He unscrews the nozzle, sniffs at the contents, squirts a drop into the palm of his hand.

“What’s this? Tar? Soot?”

Pain, I say. Rage. Shreds of childhood. Infancy, the years unremembered. Bottled and raw.

I am no longer sure whether I am speaking aloud.

He stares, shrugs, replaces the bladder then returns his eyes to the gun, keeps looking at its angular butt, shod in finest silver. The leather sheath alone is worth five guineas.

“We aren’t thieves,” he mutters, either to convince me or to convince himself, turns on his heels and returns to the campfire to offer me another pull of his jug. “No, that we are not.”

And without further ado, kicking off his shoes and picking through his toes for clods of dirt, he launches into a song, high-pitched and morose. When he is done, his companion, silent till now, looks over to me, a blade of grass in his mouth.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” he smiles, “but you mustn’t let my brother here spoil the night with his sorry old bleating. Tell us a tale, then, something that’ll pass the time while there’s still liquor in the jug. Please do, sir, or this one, he’ll never shut up.”

“A tale?” I say, gazing over to where the mask, carelessly repacked, winks one eye-glass at the moon.

Why not?

They have seen the gun. Our fates are already decided.