“Crust and all?” said Reenie sharply. Laura never ate the pie crusts from Reenie’s pies. Nobody did. Nor did Alex Thomas.

“I fed it to the birds,” said Laura. True enough: that’s what she had done, afterwards.

Alex Thomas was at first appreciative of our efforts. He said we were good pals, and that without us his goose would have been cooked. Then he wanted cigarettes—he was dying for a smoke. We brought him some from the silver box on the piano, but warned him to limit himself to one a day—the fumes might be detected. (He ignored this stricture.)

Then he said the worst thing about the attic was not being able to keep clean. He said his mouth felt like a drain. We stole the old toothbrush Reenie used for cleaning the silver, and scrubbed it off for him as best we could; he said it was better than nothing. One day we brought him a wash basin and a towel, and a jug with warm water. Afterwards he waited till nobody was underneath and threw the dirty water out the attic window. It had been raining, so the ground was wet anyway and the splash was not noticed. A little later, when the coast seemed clear, we allowed him down the attic stairs and shut him up in the bathroom the two of us shared, so he could have a proper wash. (We’d told Reenie we’d help out by taking over the cleaning of this bathroom, on which her comment was: Wonders never cease. )

While Alex Thomas’s washing-up was going forward Laura sat in her bedroom, I sat in mine, each guarding a bathroom door. I tried not to think about what was going on in there. The image of him with all his clothes off was painful to me, in some way that did not bear contemplating.

Alex Thomas was featured in newspaper editorials, not only in our own paper. He was an arsonist and murderer, it was said, and of the worst kind—one who killed from cold-blooded fanaticism. He had come to Port Ticonderoga to infiltrate the working force, and to sow seeds of dissension, in which he had succeeded, as witness the general strike and the rioting. He was an example of the evils of a university education—a smart boy, too smart for his own good, whose wits had been turned through bad company and worse books. His adoptive father, a Presbyterian minister, was quoted as saying that he prayed every night for Alex’s soul, but that this was a generation of vipers. His rescue of Alex as a child from the horrors of war was not passed over: Alex was a brand snatched from the burning, he said, but it was always a risk to take a stranger into your home. The implication was that such brands were better left unsnatched.

In addition to all of that, the police had printed a Wanted poster of Alex, and had stuck it up in the post office, and in other public places as well. Luckily it wasn’t a very clear picture: Alex had his hand in front of him, which partly obscured his face. It was the photo from the newspaper, the one Elwood Murray had taken of the three of us, at the button factory picnic. (Laura and I were cut off at the sides, naturally.) Elwood Murray had let it be known that he could have printed a better picture from the negative, but when he went to look, the negative was gone. Well, that was no surprise: a number of things had been destroyed when the newspaper office was wrecked.

We brought Alex the newspaper clippings, and one of the Wanted posters too—Laura had purloined it from a telephone pole. He read about himself with rueful dismay. “They want my head on a platter,” was what he said.

After a few days, he asked if we could bring him some paper—writing paper. There was a stack of school exercise books left over from Mr. Erskine: we brought him those, and a pencil as well.

“What do you think he’s writing?” Laura asked. We couldn’t decide. A prisoner’s journal, a vindication of himself? Perhaps a letter, to someone who might rescue him. But he didn’t ask us to mail anything, so it couldn’t have been a letter.

Tending Alex Thomas brought Laura and me closer together than we had been for a while. He was our guilty secret, and also our virtuous project—one we could finally share. We were two good little Samaritans, lifting out of the ditch the man fallen among thieves. We were Mary and Martha, ministering to—well, not Jesus, even Laura did not go that far, but it was obvious which of us she had cast in these roles. I was to be Martha, keeping busy with household chores in the background; she was to be Mary, laying pure devotion at Alex’s feet. (Which does a man prefer? Bacon and eggs, or worship? Sometimes one, sometimes the other, depending how hungry he is.)

Laura carried the food scraps up the attic stairs as if they were a temple offering. She carried the chamber pot down as if it were a reliquary, or a precious candle on the verge of flickering out.

At night, after Alex Thomas had been fed and watered, we would talk him over—how he’d looked that day, whether he was too thin, whether he’d coughed—we didn’t want him to get sick. What he might need, what we should try to steal for him the next day. Then we would climb into our respective beds. I don’t know about Laura, but I would picture him up there in the attic, directly above me. He too would be trying to sleep, tossing and turning in his bed of musty quilts. Then he would be sleeping. Then he would be dreaming, long dreams of war and fire, and of disintegrating villages, their fragments strewn about.

I don’t know at what point these dreams of his changed to dreams of pursuit and escape; I don’t know at what point I joined him in these dreams, fleeing with him hand in hand, at dusk, away from a burning building, across the furrowed December fields, the stubbled earth in which the frost was now beginning to set in, towards the dark line of the distant woods.

But it wasn’t his dream really, I did know that. It was my own. It was Avilion that was burning, its broken pieces that were scattered over the ground—the good china, the Sèvers bowl with rose petals, the silver cigarette box from the top of the piano. The piano itself, the stained-glass windows from the dining room—the blood-red cup, Iseult’s cracked harp—everything I’d been longing to get away from, true, but not through destruction. I’d wanted to leave home, but have it stay in place, waiting for me, unchanged, so I could step back into it at will.

One day, when Laura was out—it was no longer dangerous for her, the men in overcoats had gone away and the Mounties as well, the streets were orderly again—I decided to make a solo trip to the attic. I had an offering to make—a pocketful of currants and dried figs, snatched from the makings for the Christmas pudding. I scouted—Reenie was safely occupied with Mrs. Hillcoate, in the kitchen—then went to the attic door and knocked. We had a special knock by then, one knock followed by three more in quick succession. Then I tiptoed up the narrow attic stairs.

Alex Thomas was crouched beside the small oval window, trying to take advantage of what daylight there was. Evidently he hadn’t heard my knock: his back was turned towards me, and he had one of the quilts around his shoulders. He seemed to be writing. I could smell cigarette smoke—yes, he was smoking, there was his hand with the cigarette in it. I didn’t think he should be doing this so near a quilt.

I did not quite know how to announce my presence. “I’m here,” I said.

He jumped, and dropped the cigarette. It fell onto the quilt. I gasped, and dropped to my knees to put it out—I had the now-familiar vision of Avilion going up in flames. “It’s all right,” he said. He was kneeling too, both of us searching for any remaining sparks. Then the next thing I knew we were on the floor, and he had hold of me and was kissing me on the mouth.

I hadn’t expected this.

Had I expected this? Was it so sudden, or were there preliminaries: a touch, a gaze? Did I do anything to provoke him? Nothing I can recall, but is what I remember the same thing as what actually happened?