“I’ve heard of it,” Ripley said, but without intonation. He stubbed his cigarette out on the bottom of his boot. “It flourished in the Byzantine Empire.” The stubbing continued until the cigarette had splintered like rotten wood.

“Oh,” said Lee, not exactly paying attention to the fate of the cigarette. Officers tended to know things. “None of the other girls I saw there were using it.”

“It’s rare.” Ripley opened and closed his jaw, as if testing his bite. The propeller was turning furiously, the sergeant was signaling that he and Lee could board now. Still, Ripley continued. “It’s not done in Paris much, but in England, there’s a special order, they recently reissued The Art of Cennino Cennini, and—”

“She had that book.”

“Did she?” Ripley said.

“Sir? You know they’re ready for us over there?”

The men were waving, for the plane was burning fuel and the engine was getting warmer by the minute. Ripley seemed to be unable to move.

“Was it the edition with … the red cover?”

“Actually, she’d made her own cover,” Lee said brightly. He had hoped that by now he would be further into his discussion of how he had been given the puppets, and didn’t want to be caught on this digression. “She’d painted a portrait on it, a man and a woman—I mentioned it to her, in fact. It almost looked like a wedding portrait. Anyway—”

“You know, Duncan, I’m sorry, you’re right, we should go.” Ripley walked toward the airplane, taking great strides.

Lee caught up to him before they reached the twin cockpits. “Anyway,” he said, “it was quite a ride.”

Ripley said nothing. Lee had heard other men bragging and knew the rhythm to it.

“She even had a trick with an ice cube,” he said, and Ripley walked away, to the cockpit. “Sir? Lieutenant? You need this before we get airborne.”

“Need what?”

Lee handed over what he had brought from the officers’ quarters: Ripley’s pistol.

Ripley climbed over the wing and into his cab, and Lee did the same, settling onto the bench of the observer cab, where he strapped himself in and lowered his goggles.

Then he raised his goggles.

The propeller was chewing up the morning air; the plane was now rattling across the grass as Ripley opened the throttle slowly. He revved the engine so that it roared, and the rocking was more severe, for, no matter how smooth the surface was, even if it had been combed by fairies, it seemed that the wheels of a DH 4 would find every stone and hole in all of France. Lee felt himself bouncing on his bench uncomfortably. It no longer seemed like such a good day to fly.

The tail lifted; the plane leapt up like a salmon, bounced, then went airborne, up, high up, over the treeline. Lee felt his stomach dropping, but this was not quite the reason for it.