4th August, early morning; All is not well

"Oh for Christ's sake." Bright moved briskly forward and snatched the waistcoat from Kerjean's hand. The idiot obviously was not going to give it back to him any time before tomorrow. Once the garment was back on, he felt a little more comfortable - certainly enough so he became aware of what the two Spanish women were now up to.

The old one was, in fact, trying to summon the two grasshoppers, who clearly were not answering. They must have gone to join the Spanish in their departure. Probably the only smart thing they had done in their lives. "You want those two grasshopping idiots?" Bright asked the old bat, feeling secure enough in the new circumstances to do speak in English. "They're gone. Left. Adios."

To emphasise his meaning, he pointed toward the street.

"Bright, what happened?  Where'd they take you?  Did they just let you go?"  

Charcot was on his feet now, but he stayed at the foot of the stairs with one hand on the wall.  His mind was reeling from the chatter in different languages, the sudden presence of Bright and the women, the disappearance of the British soldiers, the inability to see anything that was going on, and not knowing if it was even safe to walk across the room.  By now the sounds in the street were growing louder as well.  What was going on?

Paol took half a step back as the old woman began to shout, calling out for someone -- soldiers? Neighbors? Bright seemed to have some idea, because he answered her in English. English? Jesus. But before Paol could say anything, the young girl came into view, a long, wicked looking knife clutched in her hand.

That... was a nasty looking cutting implement. And the girl looked just mad enough to try to use it. On them. What the hell had he stumbled in on?

"Maybe you ought to put yours away," suggested Bright, this time in French, even as he casually assessed the most likely escape routes from the room. He was not hanging about here if there was going to be a clash of knife-wielding nutters.

"What?  Put what away?  Bright, what happened?"

"My--?" Paol glanced down and seeing the knife in his hand, let out a curse. What the hell was wrong with him? Charcot's questions drilled into his head, fragmenting his thoughts when he desperately needed to focus. "Just hang on a minute, mate."

Short of stabbing the weapon through his waistcoat pocket, he could not 'put it away', so lowering it he stepped past Bright and very slowly, without taking his eyes off of the girl, set the knife on the ground. He didn't straighten up right away, instead holding up both hands to her to show they were empty.

The woman and girl both let out sighs of relief, and then they apparently did not know what to do with their prisoner guests.  They could send them to their room, but how would they keep them there?  Neither one of them had the time or the inclination to sit outside the door all day holding a knife.  Eventually the old woman said something to Paol, deciding he was the leader of the group, and pointed into the little front room that served as a dining room and general living area.  The women would discuss the situation while the men were sitting in there, rather than loitering about in the hall and on the stairs.

This was all getting too much, even though the mood seemed markedly less hostile now. Still. They were not past the language barrier and the old bat was babbling on in her senseless way again. Her gesturing made her meaning plain enough but the direction wasn't anything that Bright cared to follow.

"Sod this," he said presently. "I'm going back to bed." And he started toward the stairs, affecting a yawn to make his intention known.

"What?  No!  Not till you tell us what happened with the English soldiers!"  Oblivious to the tense situation, Charcot was fixated on the one extraordinary fact that Bright was back and apparently unharmed.

But now Doña Castillo had recognized Bright as the one who had stolen the bowl of stewed meat from the table, and that put her in a different frame of mind, the mindset of a begrudging hostess jailer.  If he was going up to his room, she had better follow him to take away the dish (if he hadn't already broken it out of filthy spite) and to inspect the room to make sure they hadn't destroyed it yet.  And she would make sure all the other household possessions were under lock and key, in case he was merely going upstairs to commit acts of thievery.

"Move over, little blind son," she said to the boy on the stairs as she stepped past him.  "Manuela, start making breakfast.  I'm going to look at their room."

The best course of action was simply to ignore Charcot, which was not too difficult anyway. Bright made his way carefully past him and continued up the stairs. That the old woman was following him didn't matter all that much either. He was going back to his lumpy little bed and good luck to her trying to stop him.

Closing his hand against the temptation to pick up the knife again, Paol slowly straightened. There was no point arguing with Bright. Not that it really mattered. Besides, if he was sleeping, he couldn't get into trouble.  There would be time for questions later.
 
"C'mon," he said to Charcot, taking his arm and attempting to steer him towards the room which the old woman had indicated.

As soon as he had stepped away from it, the girl darted over to pick up the knife, frowning warily at Kerjean.

"Paol, what is going on?" Charcot demanded, sitting in the offered chair.  He was so perplexed that he barely registered the fact that he was in a strange new room and sitting at a table.  He did notice that he could hear street sounds more loudly now.

Paol had stepped over to the room's window and now he turned back, pulling a chair away from the table and dropping into it. "I don't know. Spanish are kicking up a fuss about something. Nothing for us to worry about."
 
He stared dully at the table. All he wanted to do just then was lay his head down on it and sleep. But a  nagging sense of danger checked the impulse. He scrubbed at his eyes, recalling the events of the previous night. It felt like a lifetime ago, but could not have been much more than a few hours. Which meant, despite appearances, nothing had really changed. Sleep would have to wait until they were both on the same side of a shut door.

"I mean..."  There were so many things he did not understand.  Where to begin?  "What happened with Bright?  And those English - German - grasshoppers?"  He lowered his voice and leaned forward.  "Did he kill them?"  

He was about to ask more when there was a cry of frustration from the kitchen.  He remembered now that the women had been crying when they came into the house.  "What's the matter with the women?"  Maybe they had witnessed something horrible like Bright killing the riflemen.

"I don't know," he repeated wearily. "I don't think...No, he didn't kill them." Though Paol had been planning to do the very same thing, who was to say Bright hadn't simply beat him to it? He shook his head. It might have been possible, but it didn't fit somehow.
 
He didn't know what was wrong with the women either. "I'll go see," he said instead, getting to his feet. He was at the kitchen's threshold before it registered that, whatever the problem, his presence would likely only make things worse, but the alternative was going back to the table and telling Charcot, again, that he didn't know what was going on.
 
He peeked cautiously through into the kitchen. The girl was on her knees in front of the fireplace. The coals must have all gone dead, because she was hacking a piece of what must have been flint against something held in her other hand. It did not seem to be going well.
 
After a brief hesitation, he moved closer, deliberately scuffing his feet so as not to take her by surprise.

The girl started as she saw him, dropping her tinder box and flint as she stood to find her knife again. It was on a table on the other side of the room.  She backed into the corner, holding it in front of her.  "What do you want?" she demanded, even though he would not understand her words.

This had been a bad idea, he thought, watching the girl retreat and snatch up the knife. He did not try to answer her, though he could guess well enough what she meant. It was not as though she could understand his French, and even if she could, she would believe what experience told her, not him, something he could hardly argue against.

In her hurry, however, she had dropped her tinderbox and flint, and he stooped to pick them up, intending simply to place them on the nearby table, and ended up instead sinking to his knees beside the hearth.


In the ashes there was a tiny nest of kindling, but he raked one hand through the grey dust until he had a small pile of dead coals, adding a pinch of tinder before rearranging the kindling loosely over it. He felt oddly self conscious -- or perhaps not so odd, he felt like an intruder and that is essentially what he was – and his movements were hurried and awkward. Still, he'd done it so many times he could probably do it in his sleep, and even working primarily one handed, he soon had a small blaze going.

The girl watched his progress with suspicion, then curiosity, then suspense, and finally relief when he managed to coax sparks from the old flint and got the tinder glowing to start the fire.  She was smiling but she stopped as soon as he looked at her.  Instead, she gave him a sober nod of thanks as if she generally disapproved of starting a fire in that manner, but she would accept it just this once.  

Then, after a moment's deciding, she opened a cupboard and produced an apple for him.  After a thought, she gave him a look that meant he should wait a moment, and she used her knife to cut the apple in half.  

"For your friend.  The one in there."  Not the one upstairs who leered at her.  "Is he blind?"  She pointed at her eyes, and then started to hand him the pieces of apple when she noticed that his hands were, of course, filthy.

"For Charcot? Aye...I'll bring it to him. Uh...si?" There had to be some mistake. Did she want him to do something with the apple? Put it in the fire perhaps? Did they roast them like that?

Hunger got the better of caution, however, and he gingerly reached out his hand, only to quickly withdraw it, swiping the palm on his trousers. "Sorry," he said, trying again.

Her mouth quirked as he wiped his hands on his trousers, which were also filthy.  She was not going to hand over perfectly clean food to someone with hands as filthy as that, so she shook her head and set the apple halves on the table.  She poured a bit of water from a bucket into a bowl on another table and pointed at it. "Wash your hands."

Paol felt his face grow warm, but he did as he was told. His hands weren't that dirty, at least he didn't think they were, but the water in the bowl had a rather different story to tell. 

Turning back to the girl, he showed her his hands, his brows arching together in an unspoken question.

She nodded and handed him a cloth to dry them on.  No sense in letting him wipe them on his filthy trousers again, which she regarded with dismay.  Then she put the apples on a plate - might as well do it properly - and almost reluctantly, as if she was fighting herself, she cut two pieces of brown bread and two wedges of cheese.  Then she handed it to him and nodded her head at the door.  "Go and eat."

Paol looked up from drying his hands and saw, to his bewilderment, that the apples had acquired a plate. They had also, as though by some biblical miracle, transformed into not just apples, but bread and cheese. He stared at her. "For me?" he finally managed to ask, pointing to himself.