The horse snorted. Maybe that meant it agreed Maybe that meant it thought Galtier was complaining too much, too. If it did, too bad. He could complain to the horse without worrying his wife -and without making her angry, too, for she was less than delighted when he went into a tavern even for one whiskey, her fixed view of the matter being that no one ever went into a tavern for only one whiskey.

Galtier was just climbing up into the wagon when, from behind him, a cheery voice said, "God bless you, Lucien."

He turned. "Oh. Good day to you, Father Pascal. Pardon me, if you please. I did not hear you come up. I am desolate."

"There is no need to apologize, my son," Father Pascal said with an ami able wave of his hand. "You are full of your own concerns, as any busy man would of course be." He studied Galtier. His black eyes, though set rather close together, were clever and keen. "I pray your affairs march well?"

"They march well enough, thank you, Father." Lucien would complain to his horse. He would complain to his wife. He would not complain to Father Pascal. These past months, he had even taken to editing his confessions, which he knew imperilled his soul but which helped keep his mortal flesh secure. Fa ther Pascal was too friendly to the Americans to suit him.

"I am glad to hear that." The priest salted his words with the lightest sprinkling of irony. Lucien sometimes thought he talked like a lawyer. Father Pascal went on, "I am glad to see you have survived a winter difficult in so many ways."

"Yes, I have survived," Galtier agreed. I would have done better than that had the Americans whom you love so well not stolen everything that would have let me get through with something more than bare survival.

"And your family, they are all thriving?" Father Pascal asked.

"We are well, thank you, yes." No one had starved, no one had come down with tuberculosis or rheumatic fever. Was that thriving? Lucien didn't know, not for certain. Whatever doubts he had, though, he would not admit to the priest.

Father Pascal raised his hands in a gesture of benediction. His palms were pink and plump and soft, with none of the calluses ridging Galtier's hands. His nails were clean, and not a one of them broken. Truly, he lived a different life from that of a farmer.

"God be praised they are well," he said, turning his clever eyes toward heaven for a moment. "And how do your prospects seem for the coming year?"

"Who can guess?" Lucien said with a shrug. "The course of our health, the course of the weather, the course of the war -all these things are in God's hands, not mine." There. Now I have been pious for him. Maybe he will go away.

But Father Pascal did not go away. "In God's hands. Yes. We are all in God's hands. The course of the war-who can guess the course of the war? But then, who would have guessed a year ago the Americans would be here?"

"You are right in that regard, Father," Galtier said. Some priests might have compared the coming of the Americans to the Ten Plagues God had vis ited upon the Egyptians. Father Pascal didn't. Every line on his chubby, well-fed face said he was content with the military government.

Maybe Lucien let some of that thought show on his own face: a mistake. Father Pascal said, "I am but a humble religious, a priest of God. Who the secular ruler over my parish may be is not my concern."

Father Pascal was a great many things, but humble was none of them. Was he lying, or did he think of himself so? Galtier couldn't tell. "Certainly, Father, I understand," he said, still seeking a polite way out of this meeting.

"I am so glad you do," the priest said heartily, laying one of those smooth, well-manicured hands on Lucien's arm. "For too many people, impartiality is often mistaken for its opposite. Do you believe it, I am often accused of favouring the Americans?"

Yes, I believe that. I have good reason to believe that. "What a pity," Galtier said, but he could not bring himself to shake off Father Pascal's hand, climb into the wagon, and get away as fast as he could. That might arouse sus picion, too.

"If you should hear this vicious lie, I beg of you, give it no credit," Father Pascal said, with such earnestness in his voice that for a moment Lucien won dered whether what everyone said was wrong. But then the priest continued, "Should you hear such calumnies, my son, I would be in your debt if you would be generous enough to inform me who has spoken them, that I may pray for the salvation of his soul."

"Of course, Father," Lucien said. Clocks in the church towers began chiming eleven, which gave him the excuse he needed. "Father, forgive me, but I have a long ride back to my farm, and the hour is later than I thought."

"I would not keep you. Go with God." Smiling, sleek, doing ever so well under the new regime, Father Pascal went on down the street with the determined strides of a man who has important places to go, important things to do. He nodded to two American soldiers and then to an old woman in mourning black.

"Does he think me a simpleton, a cretin?" Lucien asked his horse when they were well out of Riviere-du-Loup and the animal's ears were the only ones that could hear. "Tell me who is saying bad things about me and I will pray for him, he says. He will pray, by God: pray that the Americans catch the poor fellow. And he will tell the American commandant, to help make his prayers come true. What do you think of that, my old?"

The horse did not answer. The Lord had not chosen to do for it as He had once for Balaam's ass.

To Lucien's silent, patient audience of one, he went on, "A simpleton? A cretin? No, he thinks me worse than that. He thinks me a collaborator, as he is himself. And this, this is what I think of him." He leaned over the side of the wagon and spat in the dirt. The very idea offended him. Why would anyone collaborate with the Americans?

Whenever Scipio went to Cassius' cottage, he went with fear and trembling in his heart. The fear was not a simple one, which only made it tougher to deal with. Half the time, he was afraid the mistress had found out what he was doing and that white patrollers -or maybe white soldiers-with rifles and bayonets and dogs with long sharp teeth were on his trail. The other half, he was afraid Cassius and his fellow would-be revolutionaries had somehow divined he was not heart and soul with them in their Red fervour, and that they were going to get rid of him because of that.

Sometimes, too, he carried both fears at once. In odd moments, he tried to figure out which was deeper, more compelling. It was like trying to decide whether you'd rather be hanged or shot – just like that, he thought uncomfortably. When all your choices were bad, did worse matter?

Here was the cottage. He felt conspicuous coming out to the huts in his fancy butler's livery, though he'd been doing it for years. He'd been passing a good deal of time in Cassius' cottage for years, too. He kept telling himself no one should notice anything amiss. Making himself believe it was harder. Never till the previous fall had he done the kinds of things in this cottage he was doing now.

He knocked. "That you, Kip?" came the question from within: Cassius' voice.

"This me," Scipio agreed, swallowing the misery he dared not show.

The door opened. There stood Cassius. "Come in wid we," he said, smiling, slim, strong, dangerous as a water moccasin in the swamps. "Set a spell. We talk about things, you 'n' me."

"We do dat," Scipio said, and stepped into the cabin. He never saw any one there but the people who had been reading The Communist Manifesto together the night he'd found out they weren't just labourers but Reds. That made sense; the less he knew, the less he could betray.