Alexander had never wanted to die more than he did now. He had been stolen from his home and brought aboard a ship bound for war, and there was no chance of escaping. The press-ganged were watched carefully, and he knew that by the time he was able to work out a way of escaping his guards, he would be too far from land to swim back to England. Besides that, he was exhausted. The sailors worked him mercilessly, and the food hardly seemed to be enough, though he didn't want any more. It was all he could do to keep from vomiting what he did eat. He wasn't meant to be on the sea; each time the ship rocked, his legs wobbled, and nearly everyone commented on how gray his face looked. Sometimes he thought drowning would be better than staying aboard the ship. At least it would be over quicker.

It was almost a relief when he was assigned to a troop of soldiers fighting on land. He would be farther from his Catherine than ever, but he would at least be somewhere that didn't shake and rock beneath his feet. He didn't know how the other sailors managed to walk steadily and keep color in their faces. He was more sure now than of anything else that man was not meant to be upon the sea. The only reason he would brave it again would be to find Catherine, and even then, he held a secret wish that she would be the one to cross the sea to reach him. He had a feeling that she would be more seaworthy than he had been.

For a few weeks, he entertained the idea of running away. After all, he would get farther away without drowning, and there were more places to hide in the French countryside. However, there was only so far he could go before running into the ocean. He could run from one end of Europe to the other and still be trapped far from his home. It felt strange to be someplace so much larger than London and consider himself trapped, but so it was. He and the other soldiers were the only Englishmen that he knew of, and he had never learned French or any other continental language. He would be unable to ask for help of anyone he came across, and anyone who was able to understand him would likely consider him a deserter. He was, in a way, but only in the way that an escaped prisoner was a runaway.

After those few weeks, the weather grew less and less hospitable, and he knew his chances of survival grew slimmer the closer winter got. Perhaps if he waited until spring he would have a better chance, but by then Catherine might well have forgotten about him. He knew he would be unable to forget about her, but as each day went by, he imagined her heart growing further from his. It was probably the best thing he could imagine for her. Sometimes his thoughts would go to her and imagine she was still pining, or that she had died on the streets, starving and penniless, beaten and raped. Those thoughts made him nearly ill, and he convinced himself that she was still safe. Catherine was clever, he reminded himself. She was clever and strong, and she would find some way to keep herself and Napoleon alive. Someday he would return to her, and she would remember him with a smile. She might even kiss him, though he tried not to let his hopes rise too far. After all, she had kept a careful distance from that when they were living together.

It wasn't as though being a soldier in France was the worst fate that could have befallen him. Most of the other soldiers were sympathetic to what he had lost, and several seemed willing to take him under their wing and teach him the ways of war. One, Eugene Lindon, decided right off that Alexander was going to be his younger brother in all but blood. He was short and narrow, with eyebrows that were nearly invisible against his deeply tanned skin. "You've never been in a war before, have you, boy?" he asked.

"No," Alexander said.

Lindon nodded. "Thought not. You're too scared and green. Too young. Let me guess. You were in love and signed up to pay for your family. Young wife and child at home?"

Alexander shook his head, not daring to think of having Catherine as his wife. She was too young, though not by much. "Just in love."

"You'll find plenty of folk that were. I've got a wife and children back home. Three little girls, and a fourth on the way. I expect they think I'm dead now." Lindon laughed bitterly. "Enola's family likely won't miss me in the least, and I won't miss them. Strange name to give a child. It should have been something more normal, like Geneva."

"Won't you have a chance to go back to them?" Alexander asked.

Lindon shook his head. "They're off in America. To tell the truth, they're the only reason I was sad to leave. The Lindons have always been loyal to His Majesty, and I don't see why my parents stayed through the revolution. Enola's family were staunch rebels, though. Her father and mine nearly got in a duel."

"How did you come to fight for England if you lived in the colonies?" Alexander asked. He knew they weren't properly colonies any longer but couldn't help thinking of them that way. They had always been called that when he was younger, and the idea had stuck.

"I was press-ganged, of course. At least, that's the official story. In truth, I surrendered. That's probably why I was treated better than the rest of my shipmates."

Alexander proved to be the only soldier fond of Lindon. Nearly everyone else thought him either a traitor waiting to happen or no better than a bumpkin from the country. Evan Ingham, a tall man with a way of walking that put Alexander in mind of a predatory cat, advised him to stay away from Lindon. "You can't trust anyone who comes from across the sea," he said. "They're tricksters, the lot of them. Yanks are the sorts who would rob you of your stockings and be halfway to Canada before you'd even noticed they'd left."

"He calls himself English, though," Alexander said.

"Doesn't make a bit of difference. The only people you can properly trust are those English bred and born. Being one of our colonies doesn't make them good enough to be one of us."

Alexander did his best to avoid Ingham, but since Ingham seemed to be part of every group of friends in the band of soldiers, it meant Alexander kept to himself often. Lindon always seemed to be around, and so did Victor Neal, a man with a gray moustache and long fingers. He seemed too old to be an ordinary soldier, but whenever anyone pointed that out, he would just laugh and attribute it to bad luck. "I'm the unluckiest fellow you'll ever meet, Eliot," he said. "Be sure to remember that, and don't be too close to me when the firing starts."

"Or maybe you ought to be close," another man said. Alexander didn't know much about him save that he was religious and his name was Ignatius Dick. "That way you'll know the bullets will fly past you."

It was strange that people could be so flippant, even cheerful about their potential death. It was as though they had already agreed that they were going to die and had decided to see it as one last adventure. Whenever they had decided this must have been before Alexander arrived, for he sometimes suspected that he was the only person who didn't want to die. The only problem was that he didn't want to kill either, and in war he seemed to have only two choices.

Fortunately for him, the band he was a part of had seen no combat yet. Wherever they went, there seemed to be only supplies that needed carrying or roads and towns that needed fortifying. With nothing to keep his mind from the dreadful combination of anxiety and boredom, Alexander began to draw.

It started as just sketches in the dirt made with a stick. He would sit by himself after dinner and make little images of the things they had seen that day. Lindon was the first to notice. He stopped by Alexander as he was putting the details on a farmhouse. The two sat in silence for a while before Lindon asked, "Were you some sort of artist back in London?"

"I was a painter," Alexander said. "I haven't got the proper materials here, though."

"My oldest loved to paint," Lindon said. "Velda, her name is. She loved to try to capture things on paper. Of course, that was before Enola sent her out to learn how to weave. For all I know, she's become a weaver already. She'd be of the age to marry, I think."

"Do you regret not being with her?"

"Sometimes." They sat in silence a while longer. "That's a fair drawing. You've got some skill."

"I'm better with canvas and paint," Alexander admitted.

"We may not have those, but ink and paper are easy to find. How would you like to be a proper artist?" Before Alexander could say either yes or no, Lindon clapped his shoulder and got to his feet. "Never let it be said I don't look after my friends, Eliot. I'm as loyal a man as any."

Ingham, who had been sitting some feet away, heard this and joined Alexander after Lindon had gone. "Loyal to whom?" he asked in a low voice. "He'll be loyal to you unless he gets a chance to prove that he's more English than anyone else. That's all he cares about: how he's perceived."

Alexander didn't want to argue, especially not with someone so influential, so he merely continued his sketch, adding a trail of smoke above the chimney and some low fences. It was a fair drawing, especially since he only had the earth to work in. "At least he's kind," Alexander said. "From what I've heard, he's always declared his loyalty to be England. Is it any fault of his he was born in the wrong country?"

Ingham spat. "Just keep your eyes open around him and remember where your real loyalties are. The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb."

"I'll remember," Alexander said, though he silently swore to remember that his covenant had been signed unwillingly. He had made a deeper promise to Catherine, and he felt that it was etched onto his heart with blood that he would willingly spill. Surely that would be even thicker than the covenant he had supposedly signed with the other soldiers.

Ingham left, stepping on Alexander's sketch as he went. The farmhouse was marred by a large bootprint, and there was no way for him to restore it without clearing it away entirely. Even then, it wouldn't be the same. He knew he shouldn't have felt so saddened by the loss of a temporary picture, but it had been his, and now it was gone.