Supper time. Already flustered by a bollocking from Dass, Kolya hurries to clear the table for the second sitting. As he leans past the Cossack, he feels a big hand fasten on his wrist.

The Cossack supplements his meals with salo, glistening white pork fat, from a personal supply. He has cut off a slice and speared it with the tip of his knife. This he holds to Kolya’s lips.

‘Have a bite,’ he says.

Kolya stammeringly declines.

‘Try it,’ he says, this time with a more explicit note of menace.

Once again, the boy refuses.

‘Sit,’ the Cossack says. He knows just how to lock Kolya’s wrist back against the forearm to enforce compliance. Kolya drops to the bench beside the Cossack, who entangles him with an arm like a hawser, dragging on the boy’s thin shoulders.

The Cossack smells of drink. His breath snorts noisily through the whiskers of his moustache. His veins pulse at his temples. Sweat glistens on his shaven head; slicked back against the naked skin, the forelock of bristly hair seems somehow obscene.

‘Relax!’ He rubs Kolya’s scalp with his knuckles and sniffs them. ‘Yid,’ he announces, with the proud air of a wine merchant identifying an obscure vintage. A hush falls on the table. The Cossack places the blade of his knife against the boy’s cheek, the tip with the chunk of pig fat so close to Kolya’s eye that he can’t see it. A roll of the ship could leave him blind. ‘Christ-killer. Eat.’

Some vestigial spirit of defiance moves in Kolya, some loathing of the man, some resistance to having a story forced upon him, to being an accessory in the Cossack’s personal drama of virility and orthodoxy. But silence is the only weapon Kolya has. If he opens his mouth, the Cossack will force the pig fat down his throat.

Silver flashes in the air before his face. Kolya feels the Cossack’s arm go tense and resigns himself to being cut. Involuntarily, he closes his eyes. He thinks of home. He thinks of his mother. He hears a muttered oath. The Cossack’s arm drops away. Kolya opens his eyes.

MacGahan is standing on the table. In one hand, she has gathered her skirts and lifted them clear of her knees; with the other, she flourishes the blade of the ebony-handled swordstick. The Cossack is pinned by the throat. The tip of the sword grazes his Adam’s apple. MacGahan holds his gaze. She bears down on him with a quiet intensity. Bread crusts are squashed beneath her bare feet. A pair of indigo wings have been tattooed expertly on each of her ankles to make them resemble Hermes’s boots.

‘Translate for me, boy,’ she says. ‘Tell him it’s a rapier blade. Forged in Toledo, Spain.’

With eyes downcast, Kolya mutters his translation. ‘She says the sword is Spanish.’