The infantry Colonel, elderly and scarred, climbed slowly from his saddle and walked to the porticoed entrance where a sentry presented his musket. The Colonel was too weary to acknowledge the sentry’s salute, but just pushed through the heavy door. The cavalry escort was left under the command of a Dragoon Sergeant who had a face that was the texture of knife-slashed leather. He sat with his heavy straight-bladed sword resting across his saddle bow and the nervous sentry, trying not to catch the Sergeant’s hostile eyes, could see that the edge of the dulled blade was brightly nicked from recent battle.

“Hey! Pigface!” The Sergeant had noted the sentry’s surreptitious interest.

“Sergeant?”

“Water. Fetch some water for my horse.”

The sentry, who was under orders not to stir from his post, tried to ignore the command.

“Hey! Pigfacc! I said get some water.”

“I’m supposed to stay…”

The sentry went silent because the Sergeant had drawn a battered pistol from a saddle holster.

The Sergeant thumbed back the pistol’s heavy cock. “Pigface?”

The sentry stared into the pistol’s black muzzle, then fled to get a bucket of water while, upstairs, the infantry Colonel had been directed into a cavernous room that had once been gracious with marble walls, a moulded plaster ceiling, and a polished boxwood floor, but which was now dirty, untidy and chill despite the small fire that burned in the wide hearth. A small bespectacled man was the room’s only occupant. He sat hunched over a green malachite table on which a slew of papers curled between the wax-thick stumps of dead candles. “You’re Ducos?” the infantryman demanded without any other greeting.

“I am Major Pierre Ducos.” Ducos did not look up from his work.

“My name is Colonel Maillot.” Maillot seemed almost too tired to speak as he opened his sabretache and took out a scaled dispatch that he placed on the table. Maillot deliberately placed the dispatch on top of the paper upon which Ducos was writing.