The sun shines all day. Much of the snow on the top of the guardian-mountain of this City is melting.

The river runs more turbulent through the brick channel in the city. Small boys fish from its walls.

No one ever mentions the Night of the Dinosaur.

For all the mention it gets it is as if it had never happened.

“It’s going to be a delightful campaign,” Smahil said moodily.

He was sprawled in a kitchen chair, staring at the flagged floor, his thumbs hooked in the loops of his belt.

I was at the big sink, scouring pots. The water had boiled not long ago, but the grease wouldn’t go, merely shimmied from one place to another. My hands were swollen and red, and there was a tidemark of crumbs of grease round my wrists though I had carefully bathed only last night.

We were nearly alone in the kitchen; there were pages and scullions down the other end, but the kitchen is always quiet nowadays.

Smahil swung his leg and scuffed at the flagstones.

“A charming campaign.”

“Did it ever promise to be anything else?”

“Yes, it did,” he said. “But now we’ll never get to the mysterious Continent—we’ll have all been killed first.”

“Dear, dear.”

“Picture us marching, all day, and all day and every day each army is weakened by its allies’ sniping.”

“I couldn’t care less,” I said. I began to hum. The water swilled round my fingers. The grease would never move, once a fact is clear it is easy to be resigned to it. “I’m not coming. I don’t want to see the Continent fouled by your army—and I don’t want to be picked off by a greedy-aiming spearsman from the other army—”

“So you’ll stay in a deserted kitchen—”

“And why not? At least I’ll be its sovereign. At the moment I’m nothing, no longer the god of even the youngest pages. I have to fill in with jobs like this because since Lara’s miscarriage she no longer has stews every night, in fact she no longer even likes them much at all. It couldn’t be duller than it is now—everyone is as depressed as you, Smahil dear, the new cook lives steeped in melancholy, perhaps he thinks his predecessor’s—a bad omen—”

I went on stolidly scouring as I spoke. I had been tremendously fond of the cook, but all my tears have been shed, probably for many a year to come. I feel a curious lightness.

He sneered, “A real little kitchen-sloven you’ve become, haven’t you? All right, stay in your greasy backwater.”

“While you march gallantly away, soldier. What have you become?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s hard to tell.”

An impasse, we each continued our occupations, he scowling at the floor, myself swilling at the many pots.