We turned down an alley with high, grimy brick walls. At first I accepted the rebuke, thinking this was a short cut I didn’t know of, but when we came to turnings he consistently took the wrong one. We began to meet people, scurrying along through the puddles with their cloaks held over their heads, and I was glad that the leather wrapped me, for what shreds of my shirt remained clung transparently to my flesh.

“Where are you going, Smahil?” “Home,” he replied, his lips against my hair.

Presently a row of high, narrow, grey-gabled houses rose out 290

of the rain. We clattered into a courtyard, about a quarter of the size of the one at headquarters. It was quite deserted, but birds and horses could be glimpsed in the boxes which lined it. Ours picked its way splay-clawed across the puddled cobbles, big splashing puddles in which were droppings, manure, a lot of straw and fruit peels and cores. Smahil carried me to the ground and led the bird into a stall. I stood shivering in the dry, straw-filled gloom while he unsaddled.

“But, Smahil, this bird isn’t even yours.”

He rubbed it down perfunctorily.

“I’ll send the inn-woman’s son back with it when the rain’s over. Well, come into the house.”

We emerged into the rain and then into a gloomy passage, paved and walled with cracked, grubby white tiles. The effect was both antiseptic and squalid, and I was grateful for Smahil’s presence. At regular intervals there were windows, without shutters, which admitted both the chill, fluctuating, grey light and spatterings of rain. There were pools on the tiles before them.

At the end of the passage was a wooden staircase.

Smahil took my hand and led me up it, it wound into real darkness and some of the treads were rickety. The whole contraption creaked and rattled mournfully at our use.

There were doors opening off from its side, darker oblongs in the darkness, one would have to be familiar with them to see them without peering, and Smahil opened one of these. To step easily from the stair to the narrow wooden doorstep required skill, particularly as the doorstep was rounded, but almost at once I found myself in a reasonably large room. Smahil shut the door behind us.

“Well?”

He faced me, his thumbs in his belt.

“I should be glad of a towel and—a change of clothes? —before I go home—”

“You are home.”

…“But, Smahil—”

“You are home.”

He pushed me gently into a chair, and began to pull off my boots. He removed my shirt, and put his arms round me to undo my belt.

“No…”