“Is it now? Because I don’t remember anyone bringing it up at the time.”

“A defeated opponent may ask for mercy. It need not be granted, and no one may reproach the victor if he refuses. But I repeat that mercy is always possible.” The master at arms looked at the kneeling man. “If you wish to have mercy, Solomon Solomon, you must ask for it.”

Solomon Solomon shook his head as if a great struggle were going on inside him, which indeed it was. What was going on inside Cale was at first puzzlement and then a huge and growing indignation.

“I ask you for your-”

“Shut up!” shouted Cale, looking back and forth between his beaten opponent and the master at arms.

“You hypocrites! You drag me here on a rail, and when it suits you, you think you can bend rules because things haven’t worked out to your advantage. That’s all your camel shit about the nobility amounts to-that you have the power to make everything suit yourselves. Everything about you is just a pack of bloody lies.”

“He is obliged,” said the master at arms, “to pay you ten thousand dollars to redeem his life.”

Cale lashed out, and with a cry Solomon Solomon collapsed on the ground, a deep gash in his upper arm.

“Tell me,” said Cale, “are you worth more now or less? You beat me without reason or mercy, but now look at you. This is childish. How many dozens have you butchered without giving them a second thought, and now it’s your turn, you’re whining for an exception to be made for you?” Cale gasped in astonishment and disgust. “Why? This is your fate; one day it will be mine. What’s your beef, old man?”

And with that Cale stood over Solomon Solomon, pulled his head up by the hair and dispatched him with a single blow to the back of the neck. He dropped the now slack body onto the sand, face upward, eyes open and sightless, a trickle of blood still pumping from his nose. Soon it stopped, and that was that for Solomon Solomon.

Throughout the final seconds of Solomon Solomon’s life, Cale had been aware of nothing else, not the pain in his left hand or the crowd. Rage deafened him to everything. Now the pain and the crowd returned. The sound of the crowd was an odd one-no cheering but for a few small sections too drunk to know what they were a witness to, some shouts and boos, but mostly amazement and disbelief.

From the bench where they had been told to wait, Vague Henri and Kleist watched on in a state of shock. It was Vague Henri who realized what Cale was going to do next.

“Walk away,” he whispered to himself. And then shouted to Cale,

“Don’t!” He tried to move forward but was prevented by a peeler and one of the soldiers. In the middle of the Opera Rosso, Cale flipped the body on its back, dropped his sword onto the stomach of the dead man, then pulled his sprawled feet together and started to drag his body through the dust toward the enclosure filled with the Materazzi.

It took him about twenty seconds, the arms of the dead man spread out behind him, his head bouncing on the none too even surface and the blood from the corpse leaving an irregular bright red smear. The master at arms signaled the troops in front of the crowd to move closer together. The Materazzi women and men and the young Mond looked on in an almost stupefied silence.

Then Cale, still holding Solomon Solomon’s legs under his arms, stopped, looked over the crowd as if they were worth ten cents and dropped the feet-a thud onto the ground.

He stretched his arms high above his head and bellowed at the crowd in malevolent triumph. The master at arms signaled the peeler to let Henri and Kleist pull him away. As they ran to Cale, he started walking up and down in front of the soldiers and the crowd they were protecting, looking like a polecat searching for a way into the chicken coop. Then he began beating his chest heftily with his right hand three times, each time shouting with delight, “Mea culpa! Mea Culpa! Mea maxima culpa!” It was incomprehensible to the crowd, but they needed no translation. They erupted in fury and seemed to sway forward like a single living thing, baying their hatred back. Then the two boys caught up with him and eased their arms around his shoulders.

“That’s right, Cale,” said Kleist as he squeezed him carefully. “Why don’t you take on every one of them?”

“It’s time to go, Thomas. Come with us.”

Screaming defiance at the crowd all the way, he allowed himself to be guided back to the door of the waiting room, and within thirty seconds it had closed behind them and they were sitting in the dim light, dazed by horrible wonder. It had been ten minutes since they had left.

In her palazzo, Arbell Swan-Neck waited for news in an unbearable frenzy of terror. She could not bear to go to the Opera and watch him die, for she was sure he would. Every intuition screamed at her that she had seen her lover for the last time. Then there was a strange scramble outside her door; it burst open and a wide-eyed and breathless Riba rushed into the room.

“He’s alive!”

You can imagine the scene when they were alone that night-the thousand kisses of delight showered upon the exhausted boy, the caresses, the torrent of professions of love and adoration. If he had been through the Valley of the Shadow of Death that afternoon, he had been rewarded that night with a sight of heaven. Hell was with him also-the pain from his missing finger was intense, much worse than from more serious injuries he had taken. He could concentrate on his delirious reception only once Vague Henri had managed, at great expense, to find a small amount of opium that quickly reduced the pain to a dull ache.

Late on in the night, he tried to explain to Arbell what had happened to him before the fight with the late Solomon Solomon. Perhaps it was the opium, perhaps the sheer strain and horror of the day, the closeness to stark death, but he struggled to make sense. He wanted to explain himself to her but feared to do so. In the end she stopped him out of pity for his confusion and horror, and also perhaps for herself. She did not want to be reminded of her strange lover’s pact with killing.

“Least said, soonest mended.”

Ejected from her rooms before the dawn guard came on duty, Cale left (though after many more kisses and professions of love) to find Vague Henri on guard, alone.

“How are you?” said Vague Henri.

“I don’t know. Strange.”

“Do you want a mug of tea?” Cale nodded. “Then get it on the boil. I’ll join you when I’ve handed over the watch.”

Ten minutes later Vague Henri joined Cale in the guardroom just as the tea had finished brewing. They sat in silence, drinking and smoking, the pleasures of which Cale had introduced to both Vague Henri and Kleist, who now was rarely to be seen without a roll-up between his lips.

“What went wrong?” said Vague Henri after five minutes.

“I got the shits. Bad.”

“I thought he was going to kill you.”

“He would have done if he’d been less wary. He thought the reason I wasn’t moving was some sort of trick.”

They sat in silence for a while.

“So what changed?”

“Don’t know. It went in a few seconds-like someone poured ice-cold water over me.”

“Luck, then.”

“Yes.”

“What now?”

“I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Perhaps you’d better.”

“Meaning?”

“We’re finished here.”

“Why?” said Cale, shifting and pretending to concentrate on making another roll-up.

“You killed Solomon Solomon, then dumped his body in front of the Materazzi and dared them.”

“Dared them?”

“To do their worst, was that it?” Cale didn’t reply. “I imagine their worst could be pretty bad, don’t you? And it won’t be face-to-face next time. Someone will drop a brick on your head.”

“All right. I get the point.”

But Vague Henri was not finished.