“Oh dear, how inconvenient.”

“Shall I go here?” He pointed at the floor.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Come with me.”

Taking his hand, she led him out, the two of them pausing momentarily at the top of the stairs to listen to Haig’s calming voice below.

As they entered the bathroom, Raj said, “What is this place, memsahib?”

“This is called a toilet, Gupta. And this is what we use when we go to the bathroom in this country. Come along now, I haven’t got all day.”

She sat at the edge of the tub, giving stern encouragement as Raj peed. “That’s good…. Now aim it properly.”

There was a loud knock. “Cici, who are you talking to?” It was Brenna. “Who’s in there? Open this door.”

Cecilia jumped to her feet, panicked, as Raj quickly zipped up his trousers and flushed the toilet. Cecilia unlocked the door.

Brenna peered in, horrified. “What were you doing in here together?”

“We weren’t doing anything, Mummy. Raj couldn’t reach something on—”

“Don’t you lie to me!” Brenna shouted.

Haig appeared, his exhausted, muttonchopped face floating helplessly in the background.

Brenna’s eyes fixed on Raj. “What were you doing in here, you…filthy…?”

She reached down, but Cecilia stepped in front of Raj. “It was me, Mummy. I just wanted to look. I didn’t do anything.” She was bright red.

Pushing forward, Haig intervened. “Raj,” he said calmly. “Will you go to your room.”

Raj, still in his cape and headdress, quickly exited.

“Cecilia,” Haig said, “you understand you mustn’t do this again?”

She nodded.

“Please go to your room.”

Cecilia left.

Brenna’s baleful eyes now fixed on Haig, her expression wild, her nostrils flaring. He reached to put a calming hand on her, but she slapped it away. He put his finger to his lips, pointing toward the door to their daughter’s room. Pushing past him, she ran downstairs.

In their separate rooms, the children listened to Brenna, screaming again beneath them. Raj sat on the floor huddled in a corner, a toy Saracen on top of one knee facing a Crusader on top of the other. Cecilia lay on her bed, running her fingers compulsively back and forth over the flowers sewn into her coverlet.

The screaming subsided into terrible moaning sobs, which seemed to go on forever. At last they heard Haig’s heavy steps ascending.

He went into Cecilia’s room first. “You should go down for your supper now,” he told her.

He entered Raj’s room. “Well, lad, you’ve got a treat tonight. I’m going to take you out to eat.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You need to get out of your—costume—and we’ll head off.”

That evening the children endured a silence they would not forget: Cecilia at the dining table, her mother’s face like a dry gully; Raj eating chocolate cake in Lyons as Haig brooded over the uneaten mess of his own dinner. And both children read these faces with as much hope and fear as the ancients once read the night.