The Map of Love Read Online Free Page B

shot out of the guns. Just a precaution, you know. No sense in having all that lead lying around. What d’you think?’
    ‘Yes, of course, Sir Charles,’ she had agreed. ‘There’s no need for it.’
    And when Wilson had left the room and closed the door behind him, she had allowed the fear to show in her voice and eyes. ‘You don’t really think, do you?’
    ‘No, no. Of course not. Of course not.’ He had paced away from her, the erect soldier’s figure striding to the end of the library table. ‘I hope you don’t mind, my dear —’ He gestured at his boots. ‘I rode over suddenly, you know.’
    Anna shook her head. Halfway back he stopped and struck his fist against the back of a chair.
    ‘By God! You’ll pardon me, my dear, but I feel like taking a whip to him. If he had not the stomach for it, what drove him to go? He requested that commission — he would not be denied.’
    ‘He believed he was doing the right thing.’ And also, she thought, he wanted action, adventure, purpose, a mission …
    ‘I told him, though. I told him this was not an honest war. This was a war dreamed up by politicians, a war to please that widow so taken with her cockney Empire — Ah, what’s the use?’
    He paused, and Anna came to stand beside him. Together, they stared out of the window at the trees darkening in the quiet square. He turned to her.
    ‘You should get out, my dear. This is no life for a young woman.’
    ‘I do get out, Sir Charles. I go out every day, for an hour. Mr Winthrop said I must. He said I must walk in the air. I go out every day at three, and I don’t come back till four o’clock. Edward likes to rest then, you see —’
    ‘But your little face is getting quite peaky, Anna, my dear.’ He had put his hand to her chin and under that gentle touch she had felt the tears rise to her eyes — as they are rising now.
    ‘Edward, dearest, is there anything you would like? Anything that I can fetch or do?’
    ‘I think I should rest now, for a while.’
    For shame, for shame, Anna. To be weeping for yourself now, at such a time. All your thoughts should be bent on him, devoted to him. He is in need of rest, and he cannot find it.
    How different this homecoming has been from that of his father when, as a child of ten, recently bereft of my mother, I lay on a corner of the smoking-room carpet, studying the map of Egypt Sir Charles had given me and listening to him tell of how they beat Urabi and took Tel el-Kebir. And I heard him talk ofheroism and treachery and politics and bonds, and I felt his anger at the job he had been made to do.
    But Edward will not speak and I am afraid. I have not dared voice the thought, but I am afraid we are in the grip of something evil — my husband is in the grip of something evil, something that will not allow him to shake off this illness and come to himself.
    Caroline Bourke tells me that Sir William Butler, meeting General Kitchener upon his arrival at Dover, said to him, ‘Well, if you do not bring down a curse on the British Empire for what you have been doing, there is no truth in Christianity.’ And Kitchener simply stared at him. I asked her what he meant. What had they done beyond taking the Soudan and restoring order? And she said she did not know — but with such dark looks as left me full of foreboding. I long to ask my husband what this means, for my instinct is that there is a key here to what ails him, but I am afraid. He is so changed and now is unable to take any nourishment but the thinnest broth and some crusts of bread.
    Anna stands up and walks slowly round the gallery, coming to a stop in front of an old man, his white beard and turban set off against a wall of golden brick hung with pages of white, inscribed paper. Before him, on the floor, robed in vivid reds and blues, sit the children he teaches. A sun-striped cat reclines on a green cushion watching a pair of doves pecking at the spangled mat. In the half-open doorway, the smallest of