'Is that better?'

No. He was delirious and Eliza was just like any other wife. She must nag a little, and provoke; she must never be quite satisfied. Because this was the way of wives, it was their destiny: women must always be thwarted, and so men must always fail.

They had conjugal relations, Stewart thought, no more than twice the week of his fever, and this in a farther room. He heard much more than this, of course, but the actual events he distinguished from the less real by the whimpering, puppy-like sound that Lopez made. At least Stewart thought it was Lopez. If it was not, then it was a peculiar mewling for Eliza to make. But you never knew.

And so the week stretched into one long, golden afternoon, where they were, for the most part, as happy as anyone might be, the Devil and his whore. And Stewart was happy with them, on the other side of the wall, as they arranged their lives by rules both tender and aesthetic; as Eliza brought out one shawl or another to drape on the chair, or changed the lamp for a candle, because he preferred it so.

And Stewart allowed them a life like any other couple: a shared past shot through, as it may have been, by moments of great frankness; embarrassed, sometimes, by emotions it seemed their joined bodies were too frail to bear – Lopez after the death of his father, say, or Eliza some ordinary Sunday afternoon, when it seemed to her she might drown in her own life and clung to him as a woman wrecked. And so the fever waned.

Pancho called him. He grabbed the door frame with both hands and leaned into the small room saying,

Ί think there is something wrong with Mama.'

Stewart peered into the boy's looming silhouette.

'One moment,' he said. And so, at last, he went next door.

He was right. It was lovely. She had covered the rough furniture with drapes of sage-green and grey. There was a pier-glass on the wall, a preternatural clock; there was the scent of lilac, and also a fusty magical smell that seemed to say 'Home'. In the middle of all this cluttered ease, Eliza sat with a distracted, strained attitude. She did not turn; but she answered the doctor's greeting, when he gave it, with,

'Yes, a very good evening.'

And still, she did not look at him. She spoke from the side of her face, so as not to disturb some forming thought that seemed to be gathering on the far wall. She squinted a little, as though trying to understand the shape of some stain; the lack of whitewash perhaps; an accident of light and shadow, or a horror of moss spreading in a corner by the door.

Stewart thought his delirium had spread, but there was no fever. He lifted her wrist and felt her pulse. Then he palpated, briefly, the flesh under her chin, by her ears, and along the base of her skull where it met her spine. Eliza's face, her grey brain, balanced there for a moment in his hands.

After which benediction, he sat down.

The creak of the rush seat seemed to catch her attention, at last. She looked at him; her head slightly cocked, like a bird's. It was a long look, and it was deeply estranged, both from him and from the world he was sitting in.

Stewart sought and found the phrase 'hysterical paralysis'. This is what happened to women in Edinburgh, he seemed to remember, from time to time.

Then she put her head straight and snapped to.

'Doctor Stewart,' she said, Ί felt the need of some arrowroot tea.'

'Of course,' he said.

Tancho obliged. You know I hate him running errands for his poor Mama, but there is no better boy.'

'Mama,' said Pancho.

'Or I should say "young man". Come here to me, my darling.' And Pancho strode gallantly forward, and dropped on one knee. He looked at his mother as she looked at him. She put her hand on his shoulder and, when he felt her touch, he fell forward to lie in her lap.

Her eyes then were an evening blue. They were the colour of the light, when it goes.

'She has put me in charge of sleep,' said Pancho. Stewart nodded. He had come to talk to the boy. Or he had come to sit by the courtyard fire, where they might happen upon the subject of his mother, who did not, after all, drink her arrowroot tea, but fussed serenely around Lopez when he arrived and called a soldier in to sing.

Then much bother about the piano, which must be unloaded at once and brought to her quarters. The evening made unbearable by music; a song called 'Barbara Allen'; notes that coated a man, and fingered every crevice. When the silence was finally clean, Stewart walked out to spit and look at the stars, and talk to the heir apparent.

The boy must be sixteen or so. His skin in the firelight was an uneven and glowing brown and he looked altogether romantic as he squatted there; though also a little glum, as he stared into the tangle of flame. He was thinking, no doubt, of The War.

He had the clearest gaze. Stewart took comfort from his green eyes, which were a window of light in the middle of his face. He took comfort from the fact that, in this whole travelling circus, there was one freak who might be called 'the beautiful boy'. The boy who simply looks. And he was not the only one who felt it. Belief in Pancho was a general pleasure. The men looked at his eyes as you might look at the sky, for the solace of colour, and they indulged the boy and his jewel-like stare.

Behind him, his half-brother, the bastard son of Juana Pesoa, kept fierce guard, as always, in the shadows.

They were talking man-to-man.

Ί am also in charge of the piano. I have my own brigade. We lift it in the evening, if it needs to be lifted. We keep the damp away. I have a man sleep under it, just in case. Not tonight though, as it is with my mother, indoors.'

Stewart did not ask who might want to attack the piano, but still the boy said, 'Just in case. And besides music is a noble business, is it not? This is what I tell the men, that music is just as mighty a business as killing is, and just as useful, in its way. I set them to care for "the beast", as they call it. Or, "his Mama's beast", sometimes, if they want me to hit them.'

And then, as though reciting and forgetting a list, he started again.

'Night-time security. What she calls "Sleep". I see to the bedding, personally. I make up the bed myself. It is a tender duty, you know.'

'Indeed.'

There was something the boy wanted to say.

'But sometimes in the morning, Doctor, the bed is just as I left it, the sheets not even turned down. Other times it is so screwed and wrinkled I feel like scolding her. I say, 'Mama, what is the point? When I have four men outside your door, keeping their eyes open so that you can shut yours. You should become our night watchman, you would walk in our dreams.'

'She does not sleep,' said Stewart, carefully.

'She sleeps in the carriage for ten minutes at a time, I think. But at night she does not sleep.'

'She looks quite well.'

Pancho seemed to think about this for a while.

'She always looks clean, that is the thing of it. Whether or not she has slept, or in what tent or room. She always looks clean.'

'Perhaps it is because she is beautiful,' said Stewart, and the boy looked relieved. It was indeed a burden he carried – the unmentionable beauty of his dear Mama.

'Do you think so? It is hard for a son to tell. But yes I think she is beautiful, even though she is old, now. I think a boy might say that without compromise, about his mother.'

Stewart stood up. He was hugely tired.

'You must get her to take some air, when we move again,' he said. 'The coach is so enclosed.' And the boy prodded the fire a little miserably, and agreed.

It would all keep going, thought Stewart. After I am dead, and after Lopez is dead. The son would keep going, while Woman – lovely Woman – kept turning the handle on the world's dreadful machine.