The stars twinkle out of a clear black sky. Through the bars of the yard gate comes the gleam of a fire on the square beyond. Beside the gate, if I strain my eyes, I can make out a dark shape, a man sitting against the wall or curled up in sleep. Does he see me in the doorway of my cell? For minutes I stand alert. He does not stir. Then I begin to edge along the wall, my bare feet making whispering noises on the patches of gravel.

I turn the corner and pass the kitchen door. The next door leads to my old apartment upstairs. It is locked. The third and last door stands open. It is the door of the little room sometimes used as a sickbay, sometimes simply to quarter men in. At a crouch, feeling with my hand before me, I creep towards the dim blue square of the barred window, fearful of stumbling over the bodies whose breathing I hear all about me.

One strand begins to separate from the skein: the sleeper at my feet breathes fast, at each exhalation giving a little moan. Is he dreaming? I pause while a few inches from me, like a machine, he continues to pant and moan in the dark. Then I creep past.

I stand at the window and look out across the town square, half expecting campfires, lines of tethered horses and stacked arms, rows of tents. But there is almost nothing to see: the embers of a single dying fire, and perhaps the gleam of two white tents far away under the trees. So the expeditionary force is not back! Or is it possible that these few souls here are all that is left of it? My heart stops at the thought. But that is not possible! These men have not been to war: at worst they have been roaming the up-river country, hunting down unarmed sheep-herders, raping their women, pillaging their homes, scattering their flocks; at best they have met no one at all-certainly not the gathered barbarian clans from whose fury the Third Bureau is engaged in protecting us.

Fingers as light as a butterfly's wing touch my ankle. I drop to my knees. "I am thirsty," confides a voice. It is the man who was panting. So he was not asleep.

"Quietly, my son," I whisper. Staring, I can make out the whites of his upturned eyeballs. I touch his forehead: he is feverish. His hand comes up and grips mine. "I have been so thirsty!" he says.

"I will bring you water," I whisper in his ear, "but then you must promise to be quiet. There are sick men here, they must sleep."

The shadow beside the gate has not moved. Perhaps there is nothing there, perhaps only an old sack or a stack of firewood. I tiptoe across the gravel to the trough where the soldiers wash. The water is not clean but I cannot afford to unstop the pipe. A battered pot hangs at the side of the trough. I scoop it full and tiptoe back.

The boy tries to sit up but is too weak. I support him while he drinks.

"What happened?" I whisper. One of the other sleepers stirs. "Are you hurt or are you sick?"

"I'm so hot!" he groans. He wants to throw his blanket aside but I restrain him. "You must sweat the fever out," I whisper. He shakes his head slowly from side to side. I hold his wrist till he sinks back into sleep.

There are three bars set in a wooden frame: all the downstairs windows of the barracks block are barred. I brace my foot against the frame, grip the middle bar, and heave. I sweat and strain, there is a stab of pain in my back, but the bar does not budge. Then all of a sudden the frame cracks and I have to cling to prevent myself from falling backwards. The boy begins moaning again, another sleeper clears his throat. I almost shout with surprise at the pain that comes when I put my weight on my right leg.

The window itself is open. Forcing the bars to one side, I push my head and shoulders through the gap, work my way out, and tumble to earth at last behind the row of cropped bushes that runs along the north wall of the barracks. All I can think of is the pain, all that I desire is to be left to lie in the easiest position I can find, on my side with my knees raised toward my chin. For an hour at least, while I could be pursuing my escape, I lie there, hearing through the open window the sighs of the sleepers, the voice of the boy mumbling to himself. The last embers of the fire on the square die. Man and beast are asleep. It is the hour before dawn, the coldest hour. I feel the chill of the earth enter my bones. If I lie here longer I will freeze and be trundled back to my cell in the morning in a barrow. Like a wounded snail I begin to creep along the wall towards the dark mouth of the first street leading off the square.

The gate to the little area behind the inn lies back rotten on its hinges. The area itself smells of decay. Peelings, bones, slops, ash are hurled out here from the kitchen to be forked into the ground; but the earth has grown tired, the fork that buries this week's refuse turns up last week's. During the day the air is alive with flies; at dusk the black-beetle and cockroach wake.

Beneath the wooden stairway that leads up to the balcony and servants' quarters is a recess where wood is stored and where the cats retire when it rains. I crawl in and curl up on an old bag. It smells of urine, it is certainly full of fleas, I am so cold that my teeth chatter; but at this moment all that occupies me is the palliation of the pain in my back.

I am woken by a clatter of footsteps on the stairway. It is daylight: confused, thick-headed, I cower back in my den. Someone opens the kitchen door. From all corners chickens come scurrying. It is only a matter of time before I am discovered.

As boldly as I can, but wincing despite myself, I mount the stairs. How must I look to the world with my dingy shirt and trousers, my bare feet, my unkempt beard? Like a domestic, I pray, an ostler come home after a night's carousing.

The passageway is empty, the door to the girl's room open. The room is neat and tidy as ever: the fleecy skin on the floor beside the bed, the red chequered curtain drawn over the window, the kist pushed against the far wall with a rack of clothes above it. I bury my face in the fragrance of her clothes and think of the little boy who brought my food, of how when my hand rested on his shoulder I would feel the healing power of the touch run through a body grown stiff with unnatural solitude.

The bed is made up. When I slip my hand between the sheets I imagine I can feel the faint afterglow of her warmth. Nothing would please me more than to curl up in her bed, lay my head on her pillow, forget my aches and pains, ignore the hunt that must by now have been launched for me, and like the little girl in the story tumble into oblivion. How voluptuously I feel the attraction of the soft, the warm, the odorous this morning! With a sigh I kneel and coax my body in under the bed. Face down, pressed so tightly between the floor and the slats of the bed that when I move my shoulders the bed lifts, I try to compose myself for a day in hiding.

I doze and wake, drifting from one formless dream to another. By mid-morning it has become too hot to sleep. As long as I can, I lie sweating in my close dusty retreat. Then, though I postpone it, the time comes when I have to relieve myself. Groaning I inch my way out and squat over the chamberpot. Again the pain, the tearing. I dab myself with a filched white handkerchief, which comes away bloody. The room stinks: even I, who have been living for weeks with a slop pail in the corner, am disgusted. I open the door and hobble down the passageway. The balcony looks over rows of roofs, then beyond them over the south wall and the desert stretching into the blue distance. There is no one to be seen except a woman on the other side of the alleyway sweeping her step. A child crawls on hands and knees behind her pushing something in the dust, I cannot see what. Its neat little bottom points up in the air. As the woman turns her back I step out of the shadows and hurl the contents of the pot out on to the refuse-heap below. She notices nothing.