As she was leaving the room, Sebastian’s son was trying to enter with an armload of books and documents. He was so eager that he forgot to be polite, and did not step back to let her through.

“Father,” he said, “I think I have earned my money.”

“That’s very good to hear, Robert,” Sebastian said. “Can we talk about it in the morning?”

“But I’ve been waiting for you. Didn’t Frances say?”

Sebastian began to frame a reply. But Robert was bursting with energy, and Sebastian had none with which to resist. So he said, “All right.”

Robert started to clear a space on the table for the papers he’d brought. Sebastian saw that they included Sir Owain’s book. It was bristling all around with slips of paper, like a hedgehog.

“The author’s observations of the seasons are very precise,” Robert said. “And I think the few actual dates he gives may be accurate. Unless he’s fabricated Christmas.”

“How is Christmas significant?”

“From one date I can work out another. He refers to five days on the river, two days in camp, a week spent wherever. With enough detail like that I can make out a rough chronology.”

“Can you indeed,” Sebastian said.

“I made you this to explain everything.”

In the cleared space, Robert unrolled a makeshift chart made from several sheets of paper gummed together. He placed a book on either end of it, to pin it down. The chart was somewhere between a vertical time line, and a family tree. Robert’s writing was minuscule and filled many boxes, between which he’d drawn connecting lines.

He said, “Over on the left-hand side are all the dated events that I can pin down exactly. On the right are those story events that clash with the calendar and can only be false. I’ve positioned all the other events somewhere in between them on a scale of credibility. Farthest to the left is your certain truth; over to the right is your certain fiction. Most things lie somewhere in between. It’s the closest you’ll ever get to a simple answer. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Sebastian’s head swam.

“This is … very well done, Robert.”

But Robert, who was odd but no fool, could see that his father hadn’t yet grasped the point.

“It’s not just an exercise, Father,” he said.

“Of course not.”

“It’s practical,” Robert persisted, “For example. Match your firm dates to shipping records and you can track down the crew of the rescue ship that took Sir Owain to safety.”

Suddenly, Sebastian understood.

It was brilliant. With patient analysis, Robert had deconstructed the author’s method and performed a fractional separation of fact and fiction, with a precise grading of all the shades in between. It was detailed and obsessive, and—professionally speaking—a significant piece of detective work.

“That’s very impressive, Robert,” was all he could say. “Thank you.”

“And I don’t want the money,” Robert said. “It’s my contribution. To help us get by.”

Happy now, Robert went back to his room.

Alone, Sebastian paced for a while. Then he added a piece of coal to the fire, which was beginning to die. He wasn’t ready for sleep yet, and with the fire gone the room would quickly lose its heat to the night. This was one of those occasions when he could be dazed by Robert’s flights of intellect.

He thought he might tell Elisabeth. But when he went to check, she’d turned out her light. He backed off quietly, not wanting to risk disturbing her.

Back in the sitting room, he picked her rug off the chair and shook it out. Elisabeth’s recovery seemed worryingly slow. Sebastian wasn’t sure whether to blame her actual injury or the degree to which it had shaken her, but he’d seen no real improvement since the day he’d brought her home. She hardly slept. Any movement or disturbance during the night would cause her pain.

He took the poker from the grate and gave the fire one last rake-over. Then he wrapped the rug around himself and settled into a chair for the night.

The river now widened so that in places it looked like a long lake; it wound in every direction through the endless marshy plain, whose surface was broken here and there by low mountains. The splendor of the sunset I never saw surpassed. We were steaming east toward clouds of storm. The river ran, a broad highway of molten gold, into the flaming sky; the far-off mountains loomed purple across the marshes; belts of rich green, the river banks stood out on either side against the rose-hues of the rippling water; in front, as we forged steadily onward, hung the tropic night, dim and vast.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT,

Through the Brazilian Wilderness

JOHN MURRAY, 1914

No less than six weeks were spent in slowly and with peril and exhausting labor forcing our way down through what seemed a literally endless succession of rapids and cataracts. For forty-eight days we saw no human being. In passing these rapids we lost five of the seven canoes with which we started and had to build others. One of our best men lost his life in the rapids. Under the strain one of the men went completely bad, shirked all his work, stole his comrades’ food and when punished by the sergeant he with cold-blooded deliberation murdered the sergeant and fled into the wilderness.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT, LETTER OF 1 MAY 1914

TO GENERAL LAURO MULLER

MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, RIO DE JANIERO

THE TRAFALGAR TAVERN, ON THE GREAT BEND IN THE THAMES at Greenwich, was a large Georgian inn with dining rooms downstairs and a ballroom above. It had balconies and a terrace that overlooked the river, and to save her from waiting alone on the public embankment, the management allowed Evangeline to take a seat and watch for the ferry from there. The balconies were said to be copies of the stern galley of the HMS Victory. The river was low, and pauper children were picking for coal on the mud banks directly beneath her terrace view.

There was a train off the rails at Deptford, so she was hoping to see Sebastian Becker among the Greenwich steamer’s next batch of passengers. They had agreed a time to meet, and he was late.

A waiter came out onto the terrace. He wore a long white apron, like a Parisian serveur. He said, “Will there be any fink, madam?”

“Nothing, thank you,” she said. “I see a mist beginning to rise. Is it likely to get much worse?”

“I daresay it will,” he said. “On the other hand, it may not.”

“Does it interfere with the steamer service?”

“Sometimes it do, sometimes it doesn’t.”

“That’s very helpful,” she said. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” he said, and went back inside.

Evangeline’s law chambers handled some maritime business, and through records and by telegraph she’d been able to make some progress in fleshing out the real-life details of Sir Owain Lancaster’s movements at sea, as deciphered by Becker’s son from the man’s fictionalized narrative.

Though there was nothing improper about it, there was a clandestine element to her support for Becker’s inquiries. She preferred not to have it known that she was helping him, or how he’d managed to trace her. Evangeline’s arrest at the Downing Street protest had been the result of an early militancy; she’d been swept up in the Women’s Social and Political Union when a stenography student, and, at that young age, she’d been eager to compel change by the most immediate means. But now the nature of her employment put her in an awkward position, forcing her to balance conscience and necessity. Three years ago she’d given up the WSPU for the more pacifist Women’s Freedom League. She remained committed, and continued to wear the discreet badge of her allegiance. But she’d break no more windows, and would take care to avoid the risk of another arrest. It was wrong that her employers might dismiss her for political reasons, but dismiss her they would.