‘At ease.’

The squadron deflated at his words, a mass of mops hitting the ground with soft-headed thunks. Intimidating they were not. Drills and discipline were one thing, but without weapons they were like children playing at being soldiers . . . Reports of armaments caches being moved to the capital had been circulating for the past few weeks but there had been precious little sign of it so far. An initial delivery of sixteen thousand weapons had proved a white elephant when it transpired only five thousand of them worked, and every attempt since had been foiled by ambushes and slaughter, for the Moors were expert in guerrilla attacks and played dirty with dummy surrenders that led their enemies straight towards them.

It was a grossly uneven and distorted battleground: the Republican loyalists may have had the sanction of the government but they were trying to resist the forces of a sophisticated, militarized enemy, and in its efforts to look peaceable to the foreign allies whose support it needed, definitive action from the Republican government was unforthcoming. With both the Civil Guard and the army supporting the rebel Nationalist cause, the militia had become merely a People’s Army: ordinary men and women with no prior combat experience, training to go to war with neither an organized tactical campaign to direct them, nor any weapons with which to fight. Ivan did his best to train their squadron, to explain the basics of warfare and weaponry, to teach mapwork to displaced country labourers who could not read – but even with a squad of sixty, they were no army.

‘This was better,’ he said solemnly. ‘But there can be no room for mistakes. Lack of discipline could cost you your life or, worse, that of your comrade. Keep the line and you will stay strong.’ His stare carried over them all and Marina prayed he wasn’t going to make them follow up with some target practice. Instead, for once, he nodded. ‘Troop dismissed.’

Marina let the air slide out of her as she held on to her mop for support. They had been marching for hours this afternoon and her feet ached, the small hole worn in her sole now considerably larger.

‘Come, we must get back,’ Marta said, hurrying over and slapping her on the shoulder. ‘Sindo has an important speaker coming tonight and we are already late.’

Sindo, a cobbler before the war, had grown in the power vacuum created by the hostilities, masterminding the activities of the communist underground from behind the scenes. His face wasn’t known to strangers like Paloma’s, his name alien to their ears, but that was how he liked it. A tactician rather than showman, he preferred the shadows, slipping unknown and unseen, often in the dead of night. Marina knew his tread on the floors, for she didn’t sleep well. She also knew he didn’t quite trust her, that something lingered between them that had never been articulated, a sense, instinct, of suspicion.