We went back to bed. Thorpe turned me on my side, eased back inside me, and came at last in a series of quick, sure spasms. In the next instant, he was asleep, and so was I.

And at some point, either before or after this final culmination of ours—nobody can say exactly when—a person or persons entered the bedroom of Sir Harry Oakes, struck him three times behind the left ear with an object also unknown, covered him with feathers and gasoline, and set fire to his body.

I came awake to an empty bed, some hours later, and called Thorpe’s name. He arrived instantly, dressed and smelling of soap.

“What’s the matter?” I murmured, reaching for him.

“Time for me to go.” He kissed my lips and set my arms back in the bed. “I’ll come back to you as soon as I can.”

Elfriede

August 1916

(Scotland)

On their eleventh wedding anniversary, the day Elfriede goes into labor with their second child, Wilfred’s kit arrives home at last. There was some delay, explained in official letters and telegrams that Elfriede didn’t read. Anyway, there it sits on the library rug, delivered by special courier along with a note from Wilfred’s batman that describes how carefully, how reverently the contents were packed up. How beloved Major Thorpe was, how cruel his loss for the men. Those who remained alive, anyway, after that disastrous July day on the Somme.

These are words Elfriede will read later, however. For now, the letters remain stacked on her desk, unopened. Dozens of them, from Wilfred’s men, from his fellow officers, from the War Office, from this batman of his. Private Collins, who’s been with Wilfred since India and is now shattered.

She notices the smell first. Like a charnel house, like the mud of a thousand dead men. And then the sound of screaming, Margaret screaming. Elfriede runs, or rather lumbers, toward the source of both sensations, smell and screaming, and that’s when she sees what remains of her husband. Some canvas thing, and Margaret collapsed on top, wailing in primal agony.

As for Elfriede, she hasn’t wept yet. Not a single tear. They simply won’t come. Margaret cries for them both. Wilfred’s daughter hasn’t stopped shedding tears for her father, it’s like a fall of continuous grief, never ending, and Elfriede must be her sponge. Her Cloth of Tears.