Under guard in Lisbon

Raoul winced. If that was to him... But 'stupid' was probably better than he deserved. Déu . God. What was he remembering? His face was in pain, real and remembered. Raoul released Maturin's arms and stood looking down at him. He swallowed blood, and realized that his nose was still bleeding.

Somebody brought in blankets and a straw-stuffed pillow; someone else a pitcher and a bowl, with water, and some linen strips. Whiting still had not returned. Raoul directed them to place the pillow under Maturin's head, turning it to lie on the right.

More men were coming into the room - Stephen grabbed the hand of the first. He did not know him, but his voice had been soft and kind. "Do not go." The man lifted his head, pushed it to the side, making him look away; he struggled and looked up again. His face was red, bright red - like a poppy head swaying on a thick stalk. "Blood."

Maturin caught at his arm, turning to look up at him. Blood. "Stay quiet, monsieur. I will not go." A drop of blood fell onto Maturin's hand. Raoul grimaced, released himself from the doctor's grip and crossed to the table. He dampened one of the linen strips and dabbed it at his nose. Damned thing would not stop this time. Everyone hit him on the nose. Even Maturin had done so. With his head.

He returned to the bedside. "I am still here. Do not worry. You will be better directly." Please, God, let that be so. It was painful to watch the man trying to order his thoughts. "Do you want anything? Water?"

The man untangled himself from Stephen's grasp; he felt wounded. "No." He felt nauseated. If he turned his head, he could see the man's shape a little way away. "Where are we?" He was shaking. He tried to bring his mind back - the man had mentioned something, a name, a place, but swimming in his mind were Jack, his grandfather, Emer, and a big man, covered with blood, a little knife in his chest. And a beautiful woman. He squeezed his eyes shut.

"We are in the tower at Belem, in Lisbon. You - you came here with me, des Sablières" The doctor was shaking, and Raoul laid a hand on his arm. "Easy, restez tranquille." It was like trying to soothe Noix.

"Des Sablières?" He remembered something - he clung to the thought like a drowning man. "The French Capitaine? Where is he?" Something else, something wrong... "The little one! He was hit!" He sat up, and his head swam, everything going black.

Raoul caught him as he swayed, and laid him down. The little one - Aucoin. "Aucoin is well," he said though he glanced at the door worriedly. Was that what was delaying Whiting? But in fact it had not been that long. "And I am here - Capitaine des Sablières." He was agitated, but clearly his memory was returning. "You remember me," he said, as if to force the doctor to focus his mind. But that might in itself cause further agitation. Maturin would have unpleasant memories linked to the name des Sablières. He released him and stepped back. He should not force himself onto the doctor in this condition.

"You are des Sablières?" He was surprised, and it showed in his voice. Thoughts, a moment ago so hard to grasp, were now pressing down on him, demanding his attention - dark thoughts, fears, suspicions. He lay back, wanting silence: no more ringing bells, no more waves, no more names hissing. He opened his eyes, looking at the blurred man. "No. You cannot be. I remember..." He was growing distressed, and he looked up at the man.

The doctor was staring at him, in surprise and doubt, and Raoul went back to the bedside. "It is me, yes. I am sorry. I..." He crouched down to allow the doctor to see him more clearly. "Do not distress yourself, doctor. You must be still, and it will all become clear." He should not be here. He was not the person Dr Maturin needed to help him collect his shattered wits. He was linked with battle and fear and grief and guilt. But there was no one here who was better known to the doctor, and perhaps the strange familiarity between them would serve instead of friendship.

He gripped the man's sleeve, not caring if it was des Sablières, whose name bought a vague but nightmarish flow of feelings - a dark wood, and a man sneering down at him - a man screaming, shrieking into the night like the bean sidhe he had been so terrified of as a boy - a man in the bushes, rolling in a paroxysm, laughing like an insane man, and he so worried - he gripped his sleeve, for this man was calm, and kind, and here, and Stephen was foundering. "I do know you." He swallowed painfully as he stared at the grey arm, which began to swim. "I know this arm. I leant on this arm."

Raoul swallowed his own grief. Shadows of thoughts passed across the other man's face, and it seemed wrong to force him to remember them. But we are our memories, the good and the bad. "Yes, doctor. You were hurt, and you walked with me to see my men. Do you remember Corbeille? You took a ball out of his back. He has a great kindness for you."

"He does?" He shut his eyes and swallowed. "A bullet, pressing down on the sciatic nerve." He spread the fingers of his left hand, as he remembered pressing down on a man's back. A cheerful man. A man with a friend. He nodded, then stopped as it sent a bolt through his head. "Is he...?"

"Corbeille is here - you came out to see him, to check on your work - which has been little short of miraculous in his case. He will soon be well enough to go --- there is a prison here, and he must go to it, since he is French. But you persuaded them to allow my three - three of my men - to be together. Which will be good, because Corbeille' s friend is already there. You saw him with me. Not half -an-hour ago. " He had warned Broussard, that they were prisoners, covered by British Army law, which not just dealt with violence and mutiny and escape, but also with various other activities that were not crimes in France. Broussard had nodded. He was the smarter one of the pair, and Raoul, consious of Maturin's ears, had kept the warning vague. Maturin was so set against Bonaparte, that he would not be impressed by a simple, different view on a controversial subject, taken in the Code Napoleon.

"I think I remember." Stephen nodded, shivering. His face crumpled. "So you are des Sablières." He looked away, but did not let go of the sleeve. "Thierry. Your friend, Thierry. He helped me... do something. I cannot remember. It was in the dark forest. Corbeille, Broussard, Aucoin - and Moreau." He looked up in shock. "Was it he that did that to you?"

"And to you. He attacked me, you came and pulled him off, he hit you on the side of the head, where you had been hit before" He touched his nose. "This is nothing. It's been hit harder than that. But if you had not come I think he would have slit my throat." He raised a hand to his neck. The cut seemed to have stopped oozing

"You remember Thierry - you treated his arm and then... And then when it all went wrong, he tried to stop them - Sergeant Brissac, Dumoulins - taking you back to Oporto as a prize." Raoul frowned. "And then he was shot. But he is here and doing well." No need to mention the arm. And no need ever, now, to mention that in the beginning, he would have obediently seized Maturin himself to carry off to the interrogators. He closed his own eyes.

Brissac - Dumoulins - the remembered fear flooded back into him like a punch to the stomach, and with it came the memories, horribly detailed - even more detailed than before, in ghastly colour. He could see every line on Father Miguel's face, every strain on his trousers - he could remember every word said in the clearing. "You brought them something even better," he croaked, recoiling and pulling away, coming to the edge of the bed. Every word of their conversation on the way to Belem, every code broken that night with Padstowe, conversations with Sharpe, Welllesley - the hideous count of bodies in his wake. He had been hit on the head, along the same fracture of the coronal suture, and the post-traumatic amnesia was fleeing him now. He wished he could cling to it. Memory without lucidity, emotion without armour - he scrabbled away from des Sablières.

"What!" Raoul caught at the doctor's arm as he tried to move away. The man would fall off the other side of the bed. "No, please. For the love of God, Maturin. I will go, I will go. If you will just stay quiet. You ..." But as he pulled him back he saw the look on Maturin's face - worse, worse than anything he had seen on the way to Oporto, or the walk to Belem. He kept his hold, to stop Maturin from hurting himself, but fell to his knees and buried his face in the mattress.

The Frenchman had grabbed his arm - he tried to pull away, his heart racing, and he could not - he had been wrenched back towards him. He opened his mouth to shout for a rescue, but then des Sablières did something strange: he sank to his knees and hid his face, like one sobbing or praying. He stopped, trying to calm his ragged breathing, trying to force his mind under control, rather than allowing it to mingle Dutourd and Dumoulins and des Sablières, where the dark trees became dark machines. More words, coming softly now, like the rim of foam on the edge of the sand, not a wave to crush a man - but the doctor is protected under the truce...

"You... you did not...?"

Raoul lifted his face, and stared from bleak eyes into the doctor's confused ones. Did not... What? Thierry. They had been talking about Thierry. "We were with Thierry - you were looking at Corbeille and he was there. Then Dumoulins came and said he would take you with them when they broke their surrender and went to Oporto" You brought them something even better That was where those words came from - Dumoulins, gloating that he had brought a man into camp, under truce, and they could just take him away. He had tried to argue, and Thierry had done what he could, but in the end it had come down to shooting, and Thierry had got shot, protecting him from his own men.

"No," Raoul said. "I - I believed in the truce. Dear God, do you think I would not just break my word, but sell you?"

Des Sablières was still gripping his arm, and he could not slow his heart. He was confused, so confused; his head hurt so much. "Others have." He bit his tongue; he wished the words back as soon as he had said them.

Raoul released the doctor's arm and sank back on his heels. "I am sorry. I am not trying to say that I am a model of honour and decency - you know how far I am from that. But my line is still drawn there - I do not give my word to someone and then betray them. Or break it. I would have given my life to get you out of there unharmed, once I knew how things had changed."

Others had, he had said. Raoul could not ask about that, partly for fear of finding out. Things that he believed, things that he thought he knew, that he trusted with his life and honour, were taking on new shapes, and he did not wish to probe. Cowardice, he thought, but no, it was that his emotions were too raw for him to think clearly about anything. When he had leisure, he would think about it, and try to rebuild what was damaged.

Stephen clutched his hand to his chest, rubbing at his arm. There were so many factors jostling at his memory, so many emotions striving in his raw mind, fears and paranoias and names and numbers and codes and words and threats and promises.

But there was also his instinct, and his instinct was rarely wrong. "I believe you." And it was true. There seemed to be fewer and fewer men who would die for honour. He would, his own strange and twisted system of honour, but he kept it, and he kept it with a fist of steel, perhaps because it would be so very easy for him to die. Jack would. And he believed that Capitaine Raoul des Sablières would as well.

He felt faint, and weak - he sank back onto the bed, trembling.

Raoul was breathing deeply, as if he had been exerting himself. He swallowed blood, and blinked tears from his eyes. "I believe you", the doctor had said, and that cut him like a knife. It meant so much more coming from Maturin, a man who knew his flaws and despised them, than from someone who knew no more than the surface Captain of Hussars.

He rose, and crossed to pour a glass of water. He brought it back and knelt again by the bed. Maturin was pale, his skin moist. Raoul wanted Whiting to return to reassure him that the doctor was recovering: he wanted the doctor to stay away until they had finished this terrible, necessary conversation. He placed a hand on his shoulder: "Doctor, would you like some water?"

Stephen almost flinched when des Sablières touched his shoulder, but he caught himself. He nodded. "Please." His voice was unusually cracked. "I shall be up in a minute. Forgive me."

"No. Don't get up." Raoul had seen the flinch, but there was no help for it, and he slid the hand under Maturin's head, lifting him to offer him the beaker.