When she had left the table, he finished his tea and descended the steep stairs to his basement workshop. He rarely worked at home. Transporting an instrument through the London streets could be disastrous, and it was much easier to take all his tools to his work. He kept the space primarily for his own projects. The few times he had actually brought a piano to his home, it had to be lowered by ropes down the open space between the street and his house. The shop itself was a small space with a low ceiling, a warren of dusty piano skeletons, tools that hung from the walls and ceilings like cuts in a butcher shop, fading schematics of pianos and portraits of pianists nailed to the walls. The room was dimly lit by a half window tucked beneath the ceiling. Discarded keys lined the shelves like rows of dentures. Katherine had once called it “the elephants’ graveyard,” and he had to ask if this was for the hulking rib cages of eviscerated grands or for the rolls of felt like hide, and she had answered, You are too poetic, I meant only for the ivory.

Coming down the stairs, he almost tripped over a discarded action that was leaning against the wall. Beyond the difficulty of moving a piano, this was another reason he didn’t bring customers to his shop. For those accustomed to the shine of polished cases set in flowered parlors, it was always somewhat disconcerting to see an opened piano, to realize that something so mechanical could produce such a heavenly sound.

Edgar made his way to a small desk and lit a lamp. The night before, he had hidden the packet given to him at the War Office beneath a musty stack of printed tuning specifications. He opened the envelope. There was a copy of the original letter sent by Fitzgerald, and a map, and a contract specifying his commission. There was also a printed briefing, given to him on the request of Doctor Carroll, titled in bold capitals, THE GENERAL HISTORY OF BURMA, WITH SPECIAL ATTENTION TO THE ANGLO-BURMESE WARS AND BRITISH ANNEXATIONS. He sat down and began to read.

The history was familiar. He had known of the Anglo-Burmese wars, conflicts notable both for their brevity and for the considerable territorial gains wrested from the Burmese kings following each victory: the coastal states of Arakan and Tenasserim following the first war, Rangoon and Lower Burma following the second, Upper Burma and the Shan States following the third. And while the first two wars, which ended in 1826 and 1853, he had learned about at school, the third had been reported in the newspapers last year, as the final annexation was announced only in January. But beyond the general histories, most of the details were unfamiliar: that the second war began ostensibly over the kidnapping of two British sea captains, that the third stemmed in part from tensions following the refusal of British emissaries to remove their shoes on entering an audience with the Burmese king. There were other sections, including histories of the kings, a dizzying genealogy complicated by multiple wives and what appeared to be a rather common practice of murdering any relatives who might be pretenders to the throne. He was confused by new words, names with strange syllables he couldn’t pronounce, and he focused his attention mainly on the history of the most recent king, named Thibaw, who had been deposed and exiled to India after British troops seized Mandalay. He was, by the army’s account, a weak and ineffective leader, manipulated by his wife and mother-in-law, and his reign was marred by increasing lawlessness in the remoter districts, evidenced by a plague of attacks by armed bands of dacoits, a word for brigands that Edgar recognized from the article he had torn from the Illustrated London News.

Above, he heard Katherine’s footsteps, and paused, ready to slip the papers back into their envelope. The steps stopped at the top of the stairs.

“Edgar, it’s nearly ten,” she called.

“Really! I must go!” He blew out the lamp and stuffed the papers back into the envelope, surprised at his own precaution. At the top of the stairs, Katherine met him with his coat and his toolbag.

“I will be on time tonight, I promise,” he said, slipping his arms into the sleeves. He kissed her on her cheek and stepped out into the cold.

He spent the remainder of the morning tuning the Broadwood grand of the member of Parliament, who thundered in the next room about the building of a new Hospital for the Genteel Insane. He finished early, he could have spent more time fine-tuning, but he had a feeling that it was rarely played. Besides, the acoustics in the drawing room were poor, and the politics of the MP distasteful.

It was early afternoon when he left. The streets were full of people. Heavy clouds hung low in the sky, threatening rain. He elbowed his way through the crowds and crossed the street to skirt a team of laborers who tore at the cobblestones with picks, stalling traffic. Around the waiting carriages, newspaper hawkers and petty merchants clamored, and a pair of boys kicked a ball back and forth through the crowds, scattering when it hit the side of a carriage. It began to drizzle.

Edgar walked for several minutes, hoping to see an omnibus, but the drizzle turned to heavier rain. He took shelter in the doorway of a public house, its name etched in frosted glass, the backs of suited gentlemen and pink-powdered women pressing up against its windows, wiping silhouettes in the condensation. He tucked his collar higher around his neck and stared out at the rain. A pair of drivers left their carts across the street, half running with their jackets raised above their heads. Edgar stepped aside to let them pass, and as they entered the public house, the door swung open with the steaming smell of perfume and sweat and spilled gin. He could hear drunken singing. The door swung shut and he waited and watched the street. And thought again of the briefing.

In school, he had never been very interested in history or politics, preferring the arts and, of course, music. If he had any, his political leanings tended to be toward Gladstone and the Liberals’ support for Home Rule, although this was hardly a conviction born out of serious contemplation. His distrust of military men was more visceral; he disliked the arrogance they carried forth to the colonies and back again. Moreover, he was uncomfortable with the popular portrayal of the Oriental as lazy and ineffectual. One only had to know the history of pianos, he would tell Katherine, to know this wasn’t true. The mathematics of equal temperament tuning had engaged thinkers from Galileo Galilei to Father Marin Mersenne, the author of the classic Harmonie universelle. And yet Edgar had learned that the correct figures were actually first published by a Chinese prince named Tsaiyu, a puzzling fact, as, from what he knew about Eastern music, the music of China, with its lack of harmonic emphasis, technically had no need for temperament. Of course, he rarely mentioned this in public. He didn’t like arguments, and he had enough experience to know that few could appreciate the technical beauty of such an innovation.

The rain relented slightly and he left the shelter of the doorway. Soon he reached a larger road, where buses and cabs passed. It is still early, he thought, Katherine will be pleased.

He boards an omnibus, wedging himself between a portly gentleman in a thick coat and a young, ashen-faced woman who coughs incessantly. The bus lurches forward. He looks for the window but the bus is crowded, he cannot see the streets pass.

This moment will remain.

He is home. He opens the door, and she is sitting on the sofa, in the corner, at the edge of a half circle of damask that falls over the cushions. Just as yesterday, but the lamp is not burning, its wick is black, it should be trimmed, but the servant is in Whitechapel. The only light slants through curtains of Nottingham lace and catches itself on particles of suspended dust. She is sitting and staring at the window, she must have seen his silhouette pass in the street. She holds a handkerchief, her cheeks have been hastily wiped. Edgar can see tears, their tracks cut short by the kerchief.