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at the table, proceeding calmly and sedately until I reached Whitehall, where I made a mad dash to Craig’s Court and threw open the door. Barker’s chamber was full of pipe smoke but no visitor.
    “Nightwine,” I cried, out of breath, pointing behind me. He came around the desk and we both ran to the Northumberland Arms. Of course, the table was empty. Without a word, Barker turned and surveyed the streets in every direction, searching for his adversary but not finding him.
    “Tell me everything,” he ordered.
    You first, I said to myself.

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    I recounted every word Nightwine had said; every nuance and inflection, as we made our way back to our chambers. My employer walked with his hands clasped behind his back and his head sunken on his breast. I was determined to get it all out before he spoke.
    “Obviously, he was trying to drive a wedge between us.”
    “And has he succeeded?” he asked. That’s Barker for you. No need for a hundred words when four will do.
    I raised my hands. “I understand how you work. If you wish to remain silent about your private life, that is your own affair. I suppose if I believe a piece of information you hold is required, I shall ask for it.”
    We entered the office, the door of which had been thrown open in our haste to leave, and took our chairs again.
    “Do you think my past with Nightwine is such a piece of information?” he asked.
    “You would be better placed to answer that question than I would, sir.”
    “You do realize,” he said, “that sometimes information can just as easily get you killed as save your life.”
    “I understand that, yes.”
    He exhaled half a barrel full of air and then sat back in his green chair. I sat up. He was finally going to tell me something of his past.
    “I suppose the first thing you should know is that I did have an elder brother. Caleb was two years older than I, and while my parents were missionaries in Foochow, dressing in Chinese clothing to make the Western religion more palatable for the natives, Caleb was sent to a proper English boarding school in Shanghai.
    “You must understand there is a major tragedy in China every couple of years: a flood, an invasion, an earthquake. In this case, it happened to be cholera. It swept through Foochow and my parents set up a makeshift hospital to care for the sick and dying. Before I knew it, both my parents had contracted the disease, leaving me, at twelve years old, to fend for myself in a strange country.
    “I was small and quick and could steal from market stalls and vegetable gardens, but by the time I was sixteen, I was nearly six feet tall. I had to work to eat and there was precious little chance of work while the country was at war. I dug ditches, worked on boats, harvested in the rice paddies, and carried palanquins, but mostly I starved. By my calculation, I had been starving for four years.
    “I hardly even remember the time when my parents were alive, except for a party my mother had thrown the night before Caleb had gone off to school. She had contrived to serve roast mutton and had assembled a cake from local ingredients. I thought of that cake for years. It was an inconceivable time. People were dying by the millions. A foreign boy on his own in China would have found an early grave, and so I became one of them, simply to survive.
    “China had become a nation of refugees. The Taiping Rebellion was blowing north, consuming as it came, and soon overtook Foochow. It was rumored that Shanghai was the only safe place to go, but the boats were full and the prices exorbitant. I realized my only chance of survival was to find my brother, and in desperation, I set out to find him. Over the course of six months, I walked four hundred miles barefoot. Shanghai was in chaos when I arrived, choked with panicked refugees, both Chinese and European. At least I knew where I was going, to the St. Francis Xavier College northeast of the Bund, the European quarter of the city.