Chapter 15

Late in the evening Henderson and Mary Graves now often fell to talking of what they were to do when they were to come out in the morning to find both Gerbrandy and Tendaji cold, with daggers between their ribs. In these matters the insurgents knew neither fear nor sense, they were held back from bloodshed and ruin solely by the knowledge that, in the circumstances of retaliation, were Denham-Moore to wish it, they would be bested.

It was often by the grace of Jackson and Leigh, within the company of Silva, that Mary Graves would find some contentment. The young men would hold games or bets, and contests. They talked of one thing and another, with passion and with noise. Everything was a game and an uproar as much as a conversation.

"Hey. Hey! Quit— quit that!" Silva grabbed the socket of the shovel. "Don't poke me in the back with that shovel."

"I'm testing the reach." Jackson said.

"You can test it, my arse."

"Go in the back." Leigh supplied.

"Am I going to have to assign people to join Bates?" Mary spoke.

"Ma'am. This is just 'how many times is Robert gonna cut himself on the glass'." Jackson said. "So far, we're at six."

"That's not bad."

"Six today."

"Oh."

Mary looked at the nearly unearthed hipbone between Jackson's knees. The iliac crest seemed to be missing, but the acetabulum was fairly intact. "How's your friend doing?"

"I'm competing with van t'Sand. Bates said he'd make whoever got the most his mandazis."

"You don't even like mandazi."

"Maybe not, but it's the winning that matters."

"I'm going to need you to follow up on yours of this Saturday."

"Sure." Jackson said. "You want me to do it now?"

"Carry on until you are done with that," she nodded at the hipbone, "then start on the report."

❧

"What if I became a hermit?" Bates pondered to the ceiling. He lay spread on two chairs, his leg on a cushion. "Both of us already got the beard for it."

Henderson hummed. Mary leant her chin in her hand and one leg over the armrest and studied Henderson and Bates with distracted amusement over the rim of her pipe. The edges of Bates's charcoal drawings fluttered in the slight breeze that spilled from under the canvass of the communal tent.

"Inviting me along?" Henderson spoke.

"Can't." Bates shrugged.

"No?"

"That would defy the rules of hermit-dom."

Henderson nodded. "Hu— yeah," he looked up from his writing and seemed to consider it for a moment, "what if I found my own cave, though?"

"What?"

"My own cave."

"Depends. How close is it to mine? It can't be next door, we'd just be each other's weird neighbour."

"How far does one need to be from society to be considered a hermit, anyway?"

Bates vaguely waved a hand around in the air above him, "don't think that matters much. You can be a hermit in the middle of a village, as long as you don't interact with all the other folks."

"But that's the problem with the whole hermit lifestyle; hard to do when someone can just drag you out of whatever dank cave you found and into social situations."

"Cookie sales." Bates pointed out.

"Revendeurs." Henderson added.

"Trick-or-treaters."

"Yeah… that's bad for hermit-dom." Henderson admitted, and then: "Leigh!" Henderson turned with difficulty in his chair as he called for the unfortunate young man presently engaged with his current tinkering project. "What do you think?"

"I guess." Leigh said, not looking up. "There's trouble with the water tank."

"We'll be right there, kid." Henderson said, and watched as Leigh left. "I did it yesterday." He proclaimed once the canvass fell back into place.

"Head or tails?" Bates went for his pocket.

"Tails." Mary said.

"Head." Bates groaned, and returned the dime. He pushed himself off the chairs and limped over to where he'd left his cane.