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pocket.
Arthur's eyes are still partially open; I place my fingers on the lids and
close them, then press his body by one shoulder so that he flops slowly on to
his back in an attitude generally regarded as more befitting the recently
deceased.
I rise, shaking my head. 'A heart attack, I imagine,' I tell Lucius, looking
at the hole in the roof. 'I dare say it must have been a rude awakening.'
Feeling the gesture is required somehow, I pull the bed's top sheet over
Arthur's grey, still face. 'Sleep on,' I find myself murmuring.
Lucius makes an odd noise, and when I look at him he is sobbing.
I return to you, my dear, en route to my rendezvous with the lieutenant, half
expecting to find you wheezing blue faced on the floor and clutching at your
throat, but like and unlike our quick visitor, and our old servant you too
now sleep.
Chapter 8
When I go down to meet our lieutenant, the soldiers are in the hall, watching
the shell, now disinterred, going out, carried on a stretcher. Its pallid
bearers handle the solid deadness of it with a facsimile of respect even more
faithful than that they reserve for their leader. Baby small and tenderly,
precisely as though those who bear it are transporting someone they do not
wish to wake, the shell leaves slowly, to be dumped somewhere in the woods. I
make a mental note to inquire precisely where, on the off chance we might
survive to see peace again, then go on my way, to the library and the
lieutenant.
I enter the library's wall thick dimness by its already open door and step
into the silence with due deference. The lieutenant sits in an ancient chair,
her head lying on her greenshirted arms, folded on the table in front of her.
The opera cloak has been discarded, draped like a fold of night across the
back of the seat behind her. A map of our lands lies crumpled beneath her
head, her curled, bedraggled hair hovering like a dark cloud above us all. Her
eyes are closed, her mouth open slightly; she looks like any woman sleeping,
and less remarkable than most. The ring on her small finger glints faintly.
How many devotees of Morpheus we have this morning. I feel a small moment of
power over the sleeping lieutenant, thinking that I could reach between that
old opera cloak and her shirt and slip her automatic pistol from its holster,
threaten her, kill her, take her hostage so that her men are forced to leave
the castle, or perhaps by the boldness of my action compel them to recognise
me as the stronger leader and agree to follow me.
But I think not. We each have our position, our place, as much in these
martial matters as in anything else and perhaps more so.
It would, anyway, be underhand, even ungallant.
And besides, I might make a mess of it.
Page 40
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An atlas, old and heavy, lies by the lieutenant's head, opened at this place.
I
lift one dusty side and let it fall. The thud, flat and resonant, awakens her.
She rubs her eyes and stretches, sitting back in the creaking chair and
casually, unthinkingly, placing her boots on the table by the map. These are
not army boots, nor are they the ones she wore when we first met her; they are
long riding boots, of soft brown shining leather, a little worn but still
good. They look like an old pair of mine, the last ones I ever outgrew;
another pair of refugees abducted from our past, no doubt exhumed from some
cupboard, store or long sealed room. I watch small flakes of mud fall from
their soles to caress the map. 'Ah, Abel,' the lieutenant says as I find
another chair and sit across from her. Inelegant in waking as in sleep, she
grinds a finger in one ear, inspects the waxened end, then her watch, and
frowns. 'Better late than never.'
'The lateness is not all mine; our eldest servant has just died.'
She looks concerned. 'What, old Arthur? How?'
'The shell passed through his room. He was uninjured but I believe his heart
gave out.'
'I'm sorry,' she says, taking her boots off the table, her frown still there
but troubled, even sympathetic. 'I take it he'd been here a long time.'
'All of my life,' I tell her.
She makes a strange little noise with her mouth. 'I thought we'd got away
unscathed, there. Damn.' She shakes her head.
I begin to feel a fractious annoyance at her sympathy and seeming sorrow. If
anyone ought to feel aggrieved it is I; he was my servant and she has no right
to assume my role in this, even if I have chosen not to play it to its limits;
it is my right to underplay it, but not hers to understudy me.
'Well, no; we were scathed,' I say curtly. 'I'm sure he'll be much missed,' I
add. (Who will bring me my breakfasts in future?)
She nods thoughtfully. 'Is there anyone we should try to inform?'
I had not even thought. I wave one hand quickly. 'I think he had some
relations, but they lived at the other end of the country.' The lieutenant
nods, understanding. The other end of the country; in the present
circumstances one might as well say on the moon. 'Certainly there was nobody
nearby,' I tell her.
'I'll see he's buried, if you like,' she offers. I can think of a host of
replies to this, but restrict myself to a nod and, 'Thank you.'
'Now.' She breathes deeply, stands, strides to the windows and pulls the
curtains open to the sky. 'These maps,' she says, settling into the chair
again.
We discuss her miniature campaign; she wishes to strike this afternoon, before
we lose the light. The day seems fair, and without such luxuries as weather
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