he said, and handed Thanakar the lantern.

“Thank you. You’re not coming?”

“No.” The man undid his cloak, stepped out of it, and tossed it onto the wire fence, where it caught and hung like a ghost. Old and white-haired, he was still muscular, his body hard and strong. He unbuckled his machete from his belt and tested the heavy edge along his palm. “No,” he repeated gently. “This is far enough. Far enough, I think. Far enough for me. No, I am with my family. Brothers and sisters.” He swung the blade slowly around his head, a last salute from someone who never in his life had said goodbye. There seemed something else he wanted to say, but whatever it was, he didn’t say it. He turned and walked back towards the hopeless fighting, whistling a little song.

In the parade, in the din of the drumming and the stamping flagellants and the high pure voices of the boys, Thanakar tried to recollect that little song. It had sounded so unsure. If there was language in it, it was almost meaningless, just a little stuttering at the end of a sad life. One kind of music, he thought. And this is ours, the rhythm and the whips. Men lashing themselves bloody for no reason. Some of the seminarians around him hid their faces, blocked their ears.

“Thanakar! Thanakar!” Someone was shouting to him. An enormous palanquin, yoked back and front to braces of elephants, was loaded with Starbridges. They waved to him, and he pushed through the crowd and stepped down into the road. In a few steps he reached them. The palanquin was slung low, so that his head was almost at a level with the head of Cargill Starbridge, a young man in military uniform, a relative of his.

“Intolerable noise,” the man shouted, smiling, indicating the flagellants up ahead.

“I’m surprised you can stand it,” the doctor shouted back.

“Bah. Lunatics.” Cargill Starbridge tapped his head confidentially and lowered his voice to a soft roar.

“Completely gone.”

The elephants walked slowly, and Thanakar had no trouble keeping up, his hand resting on the litter’s golden rail. “Listen,” he shouted. “There’s a riot down at the railway yard. At the waterfront.”

Cargill Starbridge winked one eye. “I know,” he replied. “Bishop’s idea. Bishop’s secretary. Not bad, really, using civilians. Teach those cannibals a lesson. No way to do it properly, of course. No men.

You’d need a regiment.”

“Prince Abu is a prisoner down there,” bawled Thanakar, but the drumbeats knocked the sound away.

“You know about the adventist? Returned prisoner. Gave a speech. Completely mad.”

“I was there.”

“Lucky dog. I missed it. I was at the hanging. Secretary made a speech. Counter example: spontaneous outrage of the people. Death to all heretics. You know the kind of thing. Then he passed out weapons.

That started them off. You should have seen them. Madmen.”

“Abu’s a prisoner down there,” but the man had already turned away, was yelling something to a woman at his side. “I’ve got to find the commissar,” shouted Thanakar.