With his help, Bernard managed to roll one leg up over the sarcophogus wall. The scarred man was practically carrying him as he rose from the coffin’s depths. He lifted Bernard easily, lowered him to the floor easily as if he were no weight at all. Bernard felt himself set down gently. He stood there, his back hunched, his mouth hanging open, his hand resting on the edge of the tomb. He stared down with glazed eyes, stared through the pools and puddles of bloody pain that kept spreading and evaporating just behind the screen of his vision.

“Now then, now then,” the scarred man said. “You can’t go anywhere looking like that, can you. We’ve got to get you out of those clothes.”

Bernard waved him away at first, or tried to. He tried to undress himself. For a moment, his hand tugged ineffectively at the collar of his shirt. Then it fell to his side again. He stood still again, staring dully at the stones of the floor. The scarred man took hold of the shirt collar and worked it up over Bernard’s head as if he were a child. He undid Bernard’s belt and pulled his black pants down to his ankles.

Bernard swallowed, fighting off the nausea. When he managed to raise his eyes, he saw the dim recesses of an underground crypt tilting and turning around him. Columns and arches, spandrels and darkened niches rising and falling as if at sea. Stone tombs, carved effigies of the dead, plaques set in the wall and floor—they telescoped sickeningly in and back. It was all shadowy. It was all empty. It was all turning round and round.

Bernard licked his lips, swaying where he stood. He felt something damp in his hand, and closed his fingers around it. The scarred man had given him a sponge. He knew that he was naked now.

“Here, you do this,” the man said gruffly. “Face too, there’s blood all over it.”

Bernard nodded. Love has the human form divine, he thought. And in loose, sloppy swipes, he began to sponge himself down.

“Put some grease into it,” the scarred man muttered impatiently. “We haven’t got all night.”

Bernard nodded vaguely. Went on sponging himself the same as before. And it was good to feel the warm rivulets running down his skin. He stood, bent and staring, thinking about that face, Iago’s face.

With me, above all, you will never be ashamed.

Love, thought Bernard, has the human form divine.

“All right, that’ll do,” said the scarred man. He pried the sponge from Bernard’s resistless fingers. “Here, put these on.”