In this past week uneasy memories had surfaced and disappeared with disconcerting irregularity, as if the approaching anniversary of the Armistice had jarred them into life again. Rutledge was not the only soldier who was experiencing this phenomenon—he’d heard two constables who had survived the trenches warily questioning each other about lapses in concentration. And several men in a pub dancing uneasily around who was sleeping well and who wasn’t. There had been the officer sitting on a bench by the Embankment, staring at the river water with such obsessive fascination that Rutledge had stopped and spoken to him. The man had travelled a long way back to the present, and looked up at Rutledge as though wanting to ask, “Were you there?” And saying instead, “The water’s bitter cold and gray today, isn’t it?” It was almost a confession that drowning had been on his mind.

As if uncertain, all of them, whether or not they were going mad and grateful to discover they were not alone in their fears. As if that made it more tolerable, not being alone . . .

Just this need had sent him down to Kent.

He found himself searching among the villagers gathered in a ring around the fire’s blazing gold and red light, but the face he sought was no longer there. Not now.

Not ever?

Hamish, alarmed and accusing in the back of his mind, was exclaiming, “It canna’ be. Ye’ve gone o’wer the edge, man!”

Badly shaken, Rutledge had lost sight of the perambulating Guy, making a lap on the far side of the bonfire. Now the grotesque effigy was coming round once more, a final circuit while the lengths of harder wood smoked and began to burn hot enough to consume the fire’s prey.

Over by the bronze statue of a mounted cavalier that stood at the point of the square where the main road curved away from the High Street, there was hilarity as a police sergeant gathered older boys around him and gave his orders. The bronze cavalier’s back was turned on the antics of his descendants, his face haughty and withdrawn under the brim of his plumed hat, the metal arch of his nose and the smooth sweep of his cheekbones highlighted by the fire’s blaze.

As the first Roman candles went streaming noisily skyward from the cluster of children, Rutledge flinched. At the Front, flares had been used o test the wind—

The crack! and the rat-a-tat-tat of the smaller charges sent his heart rate soaring. He felt exposed, caught out in the open, as the sounds of war surrounded him again. His immediate inclination was to shout orders to his men, to bend into the run that would carry him across No Man’s Land—

Elizabeth, suddenly aware, looked up at the tension in his face and cried, “Oh—I didn’t think—are you all right? It’s only the children—”