The Beauty kept calling me back. She had a headache, and had decided to have no one in her tent that night, but to go to bed and relax. She is very careful about this, loosening her whole body, pore by pore she says, upwards from the feet. She explained it all to me once. But she wouldn’t let me go. She wanted the candles moved, her pillows changed for flatter ones, her forehead bathed, not in that water, stupid child, water that fern has been crushed in to ease her ache, some wine put by the bed and did I have to wear that absurd colour of magenta?

It’s not that she’s fussy, but she gets nervous when she goes to bed early because it’s strange to her, and as for the magenta she likes to have her household looking well. I explained that it was a shawl I had borrowed from one of the camp-followers, a groom’s wife who is a friend of mine, in order to wrap round my bodice and hide some tears in my dress which I hadn’t had time to mend.

She told me to take a silver-sewn green stole of hers instead (which I have always coveted) and never to let her see the magenta thing again, and at last sent me away.

I paused now that I had my freedom. I daren’t stand at the lifted flap, looking out, or the Beauty would excusably complain of the draught and I had no one to go out with for Narra had had to spend all the afternoon in the cookhouse and was still there.

I decided to go and see my new bird properly.

I was tremendously excited about this. I had already sold Sheg to an officer for quite a good price. I had thought it wiser not to tell Beauty of my present, considering who it came from, for it was an important present. She was almost sure never to notice that my mount had changed. I went across to where it was picketed. The groom, a zealous man, had erected a light awning and all I had to do was wrap a cloak round me and dash from the Beauty’s tent to the bird-picket tent. On the way someone stopped me.

“Smahil!”

“I was coming for my cloak back.”

“Of course—I was going to send Narra—”

“I came in time, then. You’re wearing it.”

“No, this is mine, they’re very alike … If you wait here, only a second, I’ll go and get yours. It was a shame for you to have come for it.”

“Why do you think I absent-mindedly let you walk out with it?”

To this development I found no answer. I simply frowned anxiously and ran back for his cloak. I found he was beside me, simulating my pace. I had to say something.

“You’re making things very complicated.”

“There’s nothing more simple.”