"And you rely too heavily on the queen. The queen is not the only solution, you know."

Toward dusk they played a second game, but pinned between the colonel's knights and flanking bishops Gray lost again. "Primarily because you lack the warrior's vision," Michard told him. "Which is to say, you lack the necessary aggression."

Evening came with a deeper chill and random bursts of lightning. After sherry and cold salmon it seemed that every hour lasted for a small eternity. There was Zelle slowly turning the pages of her magazine, Michard cleaning his shotgun. Finally, out of desperation, Gray even agreed to play a last game of chess, another dreadful slaughter.

"You musn't keep letting Rolland win," Margaretha told him. "He becomes intolerable if he always wins." But what ultimately seemed intolerable was her face in the lamplight, her dolphin's smile.

Dawn brought a windless cold, with snow gathering like ash. After waking to the sound of wagon wheels below, Gray found the colonel chatting with a boy in the courtyard. Moments later Michard entered the scullery with a freshly shot rabbit, apparently a gift from a neighbor.

"For our supper this evening," he said.

Gray glanced at the carcass dangling from a gloved hand. "Looks lovely."

"And tomorrow I will teach you how to shoot them for yourself."

"Can't wait."

Noon brought new flurries of snow, muffling sounds all through the house. After nibbling on a few bits of cheese, Michard retired to his bedroom, leaving Gray and Margaretha to an afternoon of small-talk and more sherry. But eventually becoming concerned about her soldier, she moved upstairs to check on him. When she returned all she said was, "He's tired. Very tired."

There was a full moon at night that left the landscape glowing with suggestions of ghost shapes. After another meager supper the colonel sat with a novel. For long periods of time he hardly moved his hand to turn the page. Then, suddenly rising from his chair, he announced that he was going to bed.

But who could sleep on a night like this?

For a long time after entering his room Gray had remained very still on his bed, one hand locked around the post, the other dangling free. Then, hearing a footfall in the corridor, he had dramatically told himself, "This is it, this is the end." But what had sounded like Michard must have been only the settling timber.

Flowered counterpane and blue embroidered coverlet, the Trinity on the nightstand, the water jug, the glass bell-clock ... a quarter to four in the morning. He shifted his gaze past the curtains: a polar landscape with no depth and no shadows. He ran his hand across his forehead: cold-perspiration. He shut his eyes for one last vision of Michard: also motionless on the bed, also staring at the trees.