I use the little fruit knife on the apple, silent for a while. “Did she indeed?” I say eventually, dabbing at my lips with a napkin, clean but not, alas, pressed. “And did they say when they expected to return?”

“I did ask, sir,” Arthur says, shaking his head. “The lieutenant

lady just said, "In good time." I'm afraid that's all I was able to get out of her.”

“Indeed,” I mutter. “Probably no more than man can get into her.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Nothing, Arthur,” I say, letting him pour me a cup of coffee. “Draw me a bath, will you? And if you could sort out some clothes…”

“Of course, sir.” He leaves me to my thoughts.

Gone, with you. A guide; some sort of guide, indeed. You, who could get lost between adjoining rooms, you to whom two hedges constitute a maze. If the lieutenant has no maps nor any of her men a decent sense of direction I may never see you or any of them again. The lieutenant jests, I think. You may be a mascot or a trophy to recompense her for those worthless prizes I consigned to the waters yesterday, but not, I trust, truly a guide.

But she has taken you from me. I feel a kind of jealousy, I think. How novel, considering what we've shared, one could even say disseminated. I might even think to savour this unfamiliar bouquet, at least to swill it round before. I spit it out, but it has always seemed to be an ignoble emotion, a confession of moral weakness.

I feel I am reduced by her, so close to you. I fear my own seduction into a vulgar judgmentality, just the kind of facile moralism I have most despised in others.

I rise and make my way to our apartments; the pillows on your bed are piled oddly, and when I take them away, I find a pair of bullet holes in the headboard. I replace the pillows and proceed next door to my own room. There is a smell of something burned here; perhaps old horse hair. I can find no obvious source for the odour, though when I sit on it to remove my shoes, perhaps the mattress on my bed feels different. I look up; the tassels forming the fringe of the bed's canopy appear dark and soot stained just over where I sit. Well, there seems to be no other damage.