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 The bronze Cavalier’s back was turned on the antics of his descendants, his face haughty and withdrawn under the brim of his plumed hat, the aristocratic arch of his nose and the smooth sweep of his cheekbones highlighted by the fire’s blaze.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 to 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-”