I opened my eyes. The General was flinging off his shirt, boots, belt. On his way to the door he dishevelled, with a thrust, the bed he’d just finished smoothing. He opened the door, scowling, doing up his belt again.

There was a force of Southern soldiers outside, greenjackets, not the sentries attached to this house. They fidgeted: the General didn’t even say, “Well?”

“It’s been reported to us, sir, by one of our—your—sentries, that the wanted girl is in hiding here. We have orders to search.”

“Even in my bedchamber?”

They cleared their throats uncomfortably.

He stood aside, with an ironic gesture invited them blushing in. “The only girl here, gentlemen, is this one.” They all looked at me in the dishevelled bed, at the General’s scowling state of undress. “But by all means search. I mustn’t keep you from carrying out your duty. Look under the carpet, the floorboards, even the mattress. No spy must be allowed to escape.”

They searched very perfunctorily, their ears bright with embarrassment. keeping well away from me, poking tentative spears at hangings they took care not to tear. “Thank you, sir. That’ll be all. Obviously no one in here. Sorry to have interrupted—disturbed you—Sir.”

They all saluted while jostling each other out.

I was sitting in bed weeping.

He came and sat beside me, an arm round my shoulders. “I needn’t have saved you, but I did.”

“I know you needn’t have.” A ridiculous, almost delicious suspicion struck me, as it did once before at another terrible moment when he was taking me to execution and I had refused to sleep with him and it had turned out that he is sensitive about his skin. I think he is actually rather naive: a soldier, a lecher, a powerful leader, each aspect simple, brilliant but unadulterated. All that complicates him is his unaffected cynicism, his knowledge of human nature, the way nothing in any way unreal can sway him.

“General, I apologize for this, it can throw suspicion on you.”

“It has. But I’m glad you came.”

Then I remembered that he’s wanted to get me for ages because I know the secret of the formula.

I said, “If I were in my right mind I wouldn’t tell you tiffs, but death will seem kind when it is not—that way of dying—and you may be vengeful, you may torture me, but I don’t think it will be that way either.” He was waiting, watching me with a sort of smile. I took a deep silent breath. ”1 told the Temple black-robes the formula.”