‘There are some old marks here. Some old bruises?’
He nods, remembering the quarry. The jab of a guard’s fist into his chest. The thud of a rifle butt into his side. The smack of the baton on his back.
‘Do they hurt?’ she asks, brushing her fingers over the bruises.
He shakes his head. His face and neck are hot. He watches her mouth, the way she bites her lip as she concentrates, pressing on the darkness of the newest bruise. It is painful. He stands very still, not wanting her to stop.
‘Badly bruised, I think,’ she murmurs, then clears her throat and says, more loudly, ‘Nothing broken. And your head is bleeding less.’ She lifts the cloth and nods to herself.
On the bed, Con is still watching. Her expression is unreadable, but there is a sheen of sweat on her forehead and bright spots of colour on each cheek. She coughs.
‘You have medicine?’ Cesare asks.
Con looks at him warily, then shakes her head.
Dorotea sighs. ‘I was going to Kirkwall, to the hospital, but –’
Cesare nods. ‘Kirkwall is far,’ he says. He turns to Dorotea. ‘Do not go to Kirkwall. There is a hospital here –’
‘For the prisoners,’ says Con.
He spreads his hands outward. ‘I am a prisoner. I can get medicine.’
And, as he watches, a smile spreads over Con’s face, and over Dorotea’s too and, for the first time since meeting them, he can see how people might think them identical.
‘Thank you,’ they say, at exactly the same time.
And Dorotea skims his sleeve with her fingers. ‘Thank you,’ she whispers, just loud enough for him to hear.
He nods, forgetting, for a moment, the throbbing in his skull and the pain in his side. Forgetting the cold and the uniform he wears. He could be anywhere, with this woman smiling at him, with the feeling of her hand on his sleeve still.
As he walks back down to the camp, he barely sees the barbed wire, barely notes the glare of steel and the lifeless blank of the dusty yard. Again and again, he remembers the brush of her breath on his face, the curve of her mouth as she smiled at him, the slight pressure on his arm as she mouthed, Thank you.
So he isn’t prepared when, just as he walks through the gates, a guard steps out in front of him, scowling.
‘Where have you been? Who gave you permission to wander off?’
‘I . . . Major Bates, he say I can help to mend roof for the ladies.’
‘Which ladies?’ He is holding his baton in one hand, and Cesare is suddenly aware that there is no one else in the yard. There will be no one to see whatever this guard does to him.
MacLeod. The name comes back to him, the memory of his anger in the mess hut when he’d ripped the list of names from Cesare’s hands.
Cesare stares at the ground. ‘The ladies on the hill. The house is old. The roof has a hole. Major Bates say I can go –’
‘Major Bates said? Perhaps Major Bates doesn’t know that I’ll be needing you in the quarry then. I must tell him.’ MacLeod frowns. ‘What have you done to your head?’
‘I fall,’ Cesare says. ‘But . . . I must mend the roof and –’
‘You must do as I say. I’ll expect you in the quarry after lunch.’
‘But –’
‘But what?’ MacLeod brings his face in close to Cesare’s and, though he can’t see it, Cesare is aware of the baton in the guard’s hand, is aware of the way that the guard’s whole body is tensed, like that of a dog when it sights a rabbit.
Cesare stays very still. ‘The lady – she is called Con? She is sick. I . . . promise her medicine.’
The guard raises his eyebrows. ‘Con is sick? Then I will get medicine. I will take it to her.’
The guard’s slow-creeping smile has no warmth in it. Cesare thinks of the clang of metal on rock in the quarry, the curses and insults that the guards shout at them. It makes him think of the way that, after the thud of the baton, there is a moment of silence, when you know the pain is coming but there is no way of telling how much it will hurt.
With the guard still watching him, Cesare turns and walks towards the mess hut, his shoulders stooped and, in his stomach, a cold twist of anger.Dorothy
I scrape the spoon along the bottom of the pot, where the porridge has burned, and over the sound of Con talking, I strain for the noise of footsteps, for a knock at the door that will tell me Cesare has returned, that Con will be safe, that I need not leave her alone while I go to Kirkwall.
I’ve never seen her so weak before. She was always the strong one, the certain one, the one who made decisions. I remember her deciding we should come to this island. I remember her rowing the injured sailors from the Royal Elm over to the little bay, where no one from Kirkwall would see us. I remember the horror in her eyes as she pressed the coat over the man’s face. I remember her silence and fear in the days afterwards, as if she couldn’t believe what she’d done.
And now she coughs and wheezes and struggles to stand. I look out of the window again and again, searching for Cesare.
But it has been hours. The sun has sunk almost below the horizon, and he has not come.
‘I told you,’ Con says. ‘I told you it was too much to hope for. I shall be well without medicine. There’s no need for you to go to Kirkwall.’ She coughs again.
The oats are a blackened mess on the base of the pan. I throw it into the sink with a growl of frustration. Con jumps and wheezes.
‘Sorry,’ I
