They ride the train in silence. Inside the compartment it is very dark. The gas lamps have not been lit, whether by oversight or on purpose it is hard to say. Some whispers travel, boys with their heads thrown together, in conspiracy and shame. A few boys are crying, quietly, their faces to the window. Charlie can tell because of how still they hold themselves. Thomas, too, keeps his face averted. Charlie would like to ask his friend how he is feeling; how it was that they got separated at the market square and what it was that made him sick. He would like to tell him about the miracle he, Charlie, witnessed. A man without sin; crooked about the neck. Just thinking about it makes his heart pound with hope.

But Charlie does not trust himself to speak. A trace of Smoke remains in his blood, feeds a feeling of irritation and impatience. He’s afraid it will show in his voice. There is more to it yet. Charlie’s whole sense of who he is lies disturbed and the calm that returns to him feels strange, like a mask grown stiff from want of use. When he finally does speak, his voice surprises him, is gentle, unchanged.

“We look like miners, coming back from a shift” is what he says. He has been looking at his hands. The skin beneath his fingernails seems unnaturally pale next to his blackened fingers.

Thomas turns, cheeks shiny with Soot. There are no tear tracks linking eye and jaw.

“There was someone there,” he says. “Underneath the scaffold.”

“Under the scaffold? Who?”

“Don’t know. A man. He was stripping the dead woman’s body.”

“Stripping her.” Charlie’s mind recoils from the image. “For valuables?”

Thomas shakes his head, glowers at the memory.

“For her Soot.”

He turns his face back to the window before Charlie can ask him to explain.

ф

At Oxford station the lights are burning. The boys take stock of one another. They are, each of them, splattered with sin. Renfrew and the other teachers do a head count, the third since the execution square. It is a miracle they have not lost anyone. A porter leads them to a room at the far end of the platform. Behind the double doors yawns a bathroom twice the size of the one in school. Four rows of shower-baths stand in military formation. Some gas lamps are lit but turned down very low. On a counter there sit a hundred little towels, neatly folded and piled chest high. Renfrew crosses the room, opens a metal hatch on a large stove in the corner. A fire roars beyond. The heat is so intense he retreats two steps before speaking.