I rang in the new year with the crew of a ship taking me back to France.
Days later, I found myself back in The Battlements at last. I touched the skull as I entered, feeling less harried than I had in weeks. Something niggled in the back of my mind nonetheless. Everyone gathered that night, cocooned against the cold outside. We’d eaten and talked of nothing for several hours—my friends seemed to eye me like some friendly beast they weren’t sure how to approach with delicate subjects—and now we sat in the pleasant, heavy after-haze of late nights.
“So, you met the satyr?” Julien finally asked, stretching himself out on the armchair, which barely contained him. His shoulders and jaw looked tense at the thought of Claudius.
“Yes,” I said.
Josephine, cross-legged on the floor before Henri
