And he does not want to go right away from it. He does not want to go into hiding from now on. He still wants to take part in the struggle. It’s just that he found himself involved in something so foreign and impossible to him that he was brought to a halt. I won’t be thrown out on that account! I want to take part in it!

Am I on the run? he asks himself. But I don’t want to leave. He has been put off his balance by his defeat in John’s room. It seems to him that he is taking the wrong course. He will return to John and Peter when he is back on an even keel.

He finds himself in a maze of alleyways that he cannot remember having seen before, but perhaps he has. As a permanent messenger and runner carrying papers from the cellar he has been to most places. He is wandering now without purpose, not bothering to find out whether he is near or far from home in this complex house. Nobody calls to him from these walls, so perhaps he has been given all the warnings intended for him.

But I expect they’re watching where I go in spite of that.

He walks past countless doors, all of them tightly shut. The invisible struggle is going on behind them. Confusion and ruthlessness dwell behind these doors. Henry stares at them anxiously and shudders, feeling himself a stranger. He wants to take part, but this savage, harsh commandment fills him with such revulsion it is impossible for him to obey. He wants some alternative.

But then you can’t take part in it, he realizes.

Now only ruthlessness counts.

A door opens behind him and a guard speaks to him again in the tone of voice he recognizes: ‘Henry, what are you doing?’

He does not even pause this time, merely turns and runs back round a corner as if hunted. Then he finds himself unexpectedly in an opening with a view. He starts back in surprise: Am I here ?

He is at the centre.

An open square. From where he is standing an alleyway leads out on to it – and in front of him the centre rises into the air, with its stone walls and their shining arrows. It is extraordinary, and sinister when you know what it is. Not a soul in sight, but there is something about these walls that a person like Henry believes he can sense with an extra faculty. Blood and tears.

He supports himself against the frame of a door, pressing into it, into the shadow. The sight was too sudden and shocking. It rises into the air and extends down into the depths. He cannot see any entrance; it’s hidden and walled up. Here one is close to the abyss.

Henry has often been in the neighbourhood of the centre on his errands out in the house, but he cannot remember having seen this approach to it before. One never knows how many edges or sides it has. This strangely closed and powerful rear aspect of it makes him tremble: there is no opening to be seen, but there must be one, for the doomed vanish through it.