No one must find me, thinks Henry.

He turns cold: Won’t I be able to hide what I know if I’m found? Does John doubt this more than ever now? Yes.

Henry finds himself trembling at the thought. It is a ruthless situation. The command is written in letters of stone: You must! But it’s no use leaving it at that. He has to admit in terror: I don’t know how much I can bear. Nobody knows. Yet what was demanded of him just now in John’s room had been too much. Is that an indication?

But you must stand firm.

The sweat is sticky on his forehead. This is the moment of fear they all experience: will it be forced out of me at the last second?

No, no!

But he cannot be certain, cannot know where his own limits lie. He has no experience of it.

Where shall I go?

He is skulking in the darkest alleyways. He dare not go out into the shining arrow corridors. If he comes across one of them by chance he turns quickly and goes back into the shadows.

How shaming to have had to stand there and refuse, and, worst of all, to have left the responsibility to the others. But something in him would not agree with it. It had called in him: No! It’s impossible, you can’t do it! You must never attempt to do it. You’re not made that way!

He had listened to it and known that it was true. But that meant that the others would have to do it. What ought he to have done?

The question is churning round in his tired, aching brain. He is burning with shame.

But there was no other way. He could not have done it. So there had been no choice. No question, really, of what he ought to have done. He had wanted to carry out this order as he had carried out the others he has been given, but it was impossible.

He is walking downwards, past closed doors on either side. It occurs to him that eyes are observing him from behind small peepholes here and there. It happens all the time, and now there seems to be particular reason for watching him. Everyone is on guard – the opponent with his gilded arrows, and, just as alert, if not more so, his own people. Those who know him. The reminder that Peter and John are at his mercy has this effect on him. He runs into many people in the dark side passages, and he imagines that they are looking at him in a particular way, as if he has suddenly become different.

And I suppose I am, it occurs to him. What am I doing, skulking here? I must pull myself together or I’ll end up in somebody’s clutches.

He straightens his back and walks upright past the closed doors and the hurrying, oppressed people.

What a house, he thinks.

What’s going on in all these rooms?