Clerks carrying files of papers, criss-crossing what were still to him a maze of corridors, opening and shutting doors. Some remained closed, even guarded, while strategic conferences were in session; others, partly opened, revealed the materials and tools of command. Huge wall charts and maps, instruments, rows of waiting chairs. It was hard to imagine the immense power, and control of the world's greatest navy, being wielded from within these walls.

He walked over to the table. On it was a precisely folded copy of The Times and beside it a goblet and carafe of water.

So quiet, as if the whole corridor were holding its breath.

He moved to the window, impatient now, refusing to acknowledge the strain and fatigue of mind and body. He should have known what it would do to him. The bitter aftermath of the action at San Jose, "skirmish "as one news sheet had dismissed it, and the long passage home. Plymouth and then Portsmouth. He rubbed his forehead. Mere days ago.

It seemed like a lifetime.

The window overlooked an enclosed courtyard, so near the opposite wall that you had to press your head against the glass to see it. The other wall had no windows. Storerooms of some kind? And above, trapped above the two walls, was the sky.

Grey, cold, hostile. He stepped back and looked around the room. A cell indeed.

A carriage had been sent to Bethune's house to collect him for the journey to and along Whitehall. He was met by a clerk who had murmured polite comments about the weather and the amount of traffic, which, he was told, often delayed important meetings if senior officers were trapped in it. The constant movement, the noise. Like a foreign country. Because I am the stranger here.

From there he had been handed over to the porter, a towering, heavy man in a smart tailed coat with gleaming buttons, whose buckled shoes had clicked down one passageway after another as he led the way. Like a ship of the line, with lesser craft parting to let them through.