[Sir John continues]

One advantage to having Erik with us was that the meals became much more interesting. Unfortunately, the portions were much smaller, because Erik complained that it was tedious enough being expected to eat three meals a day without being put off his food by the sight of other people making pigs of themselves. After he'd managed to force down a portion of Cheiron's excellent herb and mushroom omelette, he retreated to the cave to catch up on the sleep he'd missed last night, as Cheiron had agreed that the sun was getting a bit hot and it might be best not to start on the journey until late afternoon.

'You never spoiled me this much when I was new here,' I pointed out to Cheiron, when I was fairly sure Erik was asleep. 'Then it was a case of: "It's porridge for breakfast – take it or leave it."'

'Yes, but there wasn't any danger of you forgetting to eat, was there?' said Cheiron. 'Have you heard of a philosopher called Epicurus?'

'Wasn't he the one who said that the right way to live is to enjoy the maximum amount of pleasure?'

'That's right: the maximum pleasure with the minimum suffering. And he said that in order to do that, you need to learn to distinguish between three types of desire. There are desires that are both natural and necessary: for example, the desire to eat enough bread not to be hungry, drink enough water not to be thirsty, and have enough shelter not to be cold. Those have to be fulfilled. Then there are desires that are natural but not strictly necessary for survival, like the desire for rich food and wine and sex. In the case of those, you need to think about whether indulging them will bring more pleasure than pain; so, if eating and drinking too much makes you ill, or having sex with lots of people means you're more likely to catch an infection, it might bring more suffering than pleasure, in which case it isn't really worth it. And thirdly, there are desires that aren't natural or necessary, like the desire for expensive clothes or fame or political power, and the key to those is to realise that they're worthless, and not seek them at all.'

'Epicurus needed to get out more,' I said. 'And which category did he think friendship came into? A mere scutcheon?'

'Oh, very high up the list of essentials. What he actually said was, "Eating a meal without a friend to share it is dining like a wolf or a lion," but that's extremely unfair on wolves; they're very sociable animals. But the point is that his theory about knowing the difference between needs and desires only works if you're conscious of having needs and desires. Now, if you're too hot, or tired, or hungry, you notice it, and you make sure everyone else knows as well. But Erik seems to forget that he's a mind attached to a body that needs to eat and drink, and so, for the moment, we need to tempt him to eat meals, until it becomes a habit.'

'So what you're really saying is that I'm a very physical person, whereas Erik is completely mental?'

'I'm afraid so. But you're being incredibly patient with him anyway.'

'Oh, he's not much weirder than most of the people I used to drink with in Eastcheap,' I said. 'Well – no worse than Pistol, anyway.'

Erik woke up in a reasonably good mood, and stayed patient even while trying to teach Andrew a song called Deep Purple Dreams. Late in the afternoon, we finally set off on our journey, until we found somewhere to camp. As we now had three tents, Erik and I shared one of the bell-tents, Andrew and Malvolio took the other, and Arthur had the pup-tent to himself.

'Promise not to kill me tonight?' I asked Erik.

'Yes, if you promise not to snore.'

'Come on, I can't promise that,' I said. 'But we've both been criminals and we're both trying to reform now, so, if you promise not to kill me, I'll promise not to steal that gold ring off your finger.'

'You wouldn't!' shrieked Erik, curling his fingers protectively round it. 'Anyway, stealing this ring would be far worse than murder.'

'Why? Is it a magic one? Does it make you invisible?'

'Far more miraculous than that, my dear Whale. This is practically very nearly a wedding-ring.'

'From that girl you kidnapped?'

'I gave it to Christine when I first wanted her to know me as a man and not as the Angel of Music. She lost it, but I found it and offered it to her again, this time as our wedding-ring, when I was trying to force her to marry me. But when she had pity on me and took off my mask and kissed my ruin of a face, when nobody else had ever kissed me in my entire life, not even my mother when I was little – then I had mercy on her, too, and gave her the ring so that she and her boyfriend could get married while I lay down to die. Then, when I was dead, they came back and placed the ring on my finger when they buried me. And that's why this ring is preccioussss!'

For the record, I have no idea how Erik has moved into another life still bearing the ring he was buried with. Obviously, you're not supposed to be able to take anything with you when you die. But then, Erik and I had come here in our bodies, perhaps because they were part of who we were, or because, until we'd learnt how to take proper care of our ruined earthly bodies, we couldn't be trusted with the glorious bodies of resurrection. It was like the way that very young children might keep a minnow or a snail before they are old enough to look after a dog or a horse. And Erik's 'nearly wedding-ring' was a part of who he was, too, and a reminder that mercy and generosity did exist. I was glad he'd been allowed to keep it.

'Did you sleep well?' asked Erik the next morning.

I yawned. 'Ah, yes, thanks.'

'Did you have any dreams?'

'Yes, it was great. I dreamed about a weaver who went into the forest to learn his lines for a play but got turned into a donkey, and there was a young politician who was half a fairy but was mortal from the waist down, and then the Queen of the Fairies fell in love with the donkey because he reminded her of her old lover, the Lord Chancellor, and it ended with the entire House of Lords getting married to fairies.'

'Liar!' snarled Erik. 'You were plagued by nightmares of tropical jungles, weren't you? You saw every beast of the forest either lurking to attack you or waiting to gorge itself on your carrion. Admit it!'

'No, I didn't. Was I supposed to?'

'Oh, for pity's sake!' exclaimed Erik. 'What's the point of sending you subliminal messages if you can't even be bothered to listen? For the past seven hours, I've been imitating the call of every noxious beast to trouble your sleep. I have been the roar of the lion and that of the leopard, the howl of the wolf and the yelp of the jackal and the laugh of the hyena. I have been the whine of the mosquito, the buzz of the tsetse fly and the chitter of the little South American vampire bat, all dripping with malaria and sleeping-sickness and rabies to poison your blood even as they drank from you...'

'How do you know I don't already have sleeping-sickness?' I retorted.

'I was wondering whether you'd wake up screaming or soak your sleeping-bag in terror as you snored on,' continued Erik. 'Instead of which, you just lay there dreaming a fairy-tale about donkeys and the House of Lords! There's no doubt about it: my powers are declining. Once I could keep the entire staff of the Opera House – not just hysterical singers and dancers, but everyone from the managers to sturdy firemen and horse-trainers – in such a pitch of terror that if they so much as glimpsed the rat-catcher with his lantern, they'd scream that the Phantom had a head made of fire! And now I can't even intimidate the most abject coward ever to disgrace a knighthood.'

He looked so crestfallen that I put an arm round his shoulders. 'You were just trying too hard,' I said. 'After all, I've never been to Africa, so I don't know what a hyena is supposed to sound like, do I? And anyway, I'm not the most abject coward ever to disgrace a knighthood. There's always Sir Andrew.'

'He doesn't count,' said Erik. 'I think he might really have some talent as a singer, though: not a lot, but some. And that's the way the world goes. Once I was tutor to a classical soprano whose genius perfectly complemented my own; now I'm trying to teach an inane butterfly who'd quite like to be good at singing because he's used to being not very good at anything. Once you befriended a brave prince; now you're willing to spend your time with a psychopathic ex-sideshow freak. In the end, we all find companions who don't have any better options.'