My husband had ordered me up to the Long Gallery. He had not spoken to me directly for a week and I did not know whether to expect an apology or a continuation of the angry tirade that had concluded our last meeting, or indeed whether he was about to carry out some of the more lurid threats he had made. It seemed entirely possible that the summons was nothing more than a ruse to get me away from my apartments so that some of his thugs could burst in and cut Paul''s throat whilst I was not there to protect him, so I told the wet nurse to take the boy to some obscure corner of the servants'' quarters and barricade the two of them behind a locked door which she was to open only at my command. It was early October, a day of high wind and driving rain that sucked the light from the sky and made a musical instrument of every leaded pane. The chimneys sang and the fires danced in the downdraughts. I had lost a great deal of blood during the birth and been too nauseous to eat rich food since. My skin was pale, my cheeks sunken and my step unsteady so that when they saw me some of the servants froze briefly before pausing and bowing, thinking, perhaps, that I was an apparition and not their flesh- and- blood mistress. I stopped to gather myself on the staircase leading up to the gallery.

The wind in the Great Court was twisting, now this way now that, like some chained, ill- tempered animal so that the high windows were briefly clear enough to show the pewter sky and the wing of the palace opposite, and in the relative quiet I could hear the rusty squeal of the weathervane twisting on the roof above my head, then water was hurled against the glass as if from a great pitcher and the scene vanished. I climbed the last flight and, in unison, two surly footmen unlatched the heavy double doors to usher me inside. My hus­band''s elkhounds got to their feet and began barking immediately. I could smell that one of them had pissed somewhere in the room. I waited for them to settle, then walked along the line of portraits of my husband''s forebears who seemed half- alive in the jigging light from the sconces. He was sitting in one of four chairs facing each other at the far end of the room, like a solitary lutenist waiting for the rest of his consort. Attendants stood either side of the far door like caryatids. "Why have you called me here?" "I have invited someone to join us.

" "And that person is?" "You look unwell." Once upon a time I had taken his refusal ever to answer a direct question as a sign of his quick wit, but I was no longer willing to play a game in which my role--indeed everyone''s role--was to remain at a disadvantage, always reaching for a volley that was just out of their grasp. I took a seat and tried not to waste my effort by pondering the nature of whatever drama he had planned. It would be tiring enough in and of itself. Rain smashed against the win­dows and a log in the fireplace broke and slumped, sending up a great jet of sparks. I heard footsteps on the staircase and my hus­band casually stood and looked out of the window with his hands crossed behind his back, feigning indifference about the guests he had himself invited. I thought at first that the engineer and his son had arrived before those intended guests on account of some emergency, a flooding perhaps, given the weather. My husband let them stand at the end of the room for an uncomfortable length of time, then turned and shook his head as if roused from some reverie by their appearance.

"Gentlemen, forgive me. Join us. Take a seat." So they were indeed our guests, though quite how I was to be involved in a conversation about hydrology or the construction of bridges I had no idea. Now that I had the opportunity to see the two men at close quarters as they walked towards us it struck me how weak a fam­ily likeness they shared. The father was renowned, my husband had said on numerous occasions without ever stooping to suggest that he shared this opinion, for the brilliance of his mind. There was something of the rodent about him, wiry, furtive, dishevelled. I don''t think he''d been in this room before.

Certainly, he was tak­ing careful note of its architecture and contents as they walked its length. I wondered idly if he were looking for an escape route should one prove necessary. He was a good head shorter than his son, who could have carried his father under his arm as easily as a rolled tapestry. I doubt the son had ever needed to look for an escape route. I have known several young men of his kind, who mistook the goodwill generated by their handsome looks and radi­ant physical prowess for fundamental qualities of the world. They burnt brightly and briefly at court before crashing to earth, victims of intrigues and duplicities of which they were utterly unaware and against which they were powerless to fight. As they were taking their seats the son turned to me and said, "It is good to see you. We were all greatly worried about your health.

" The inappropriateness of this direct address was so utterly guile­less that my husband was caught off guard and forced to be gra­cious in return. "You are kind." I liked the boy immediately. Once we were seated my husband waited for everyone to become still. "Gentlemen ." The word sounded less respectful this time around. He lowered his voice and leant forward with his elbows on his knees as if we were in a tavern and about to play a round of cards. "My wife has given birth to a mooncalf.

" The words struck me like a slap across the face. The appearance of the engineer and his son had sent my thoughts in another direc­tion entirely and my guard was down. I sat back in my chair and recited, silently, some lines of Sidney to calm my mind. Come Sleep, O Sleep, the certain knot of peace, The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe, The poor man''s wealth, the prisoner''s release . "It is a repellent chimaera, part human, part ape, part God alone knows what." "The child is a boy." I could not help myself. My husband turned to look at me.

"His name is Paul." "We give names to dogs." He held my eye. "It means little." He turned to the engineer. "If it lives it brings dishonour upon me and undermines my authority. As would the rumour that I had killed my own son. Sadly, my wife is sentimental and will not allow it to .

pass away in its sleep." He filled the pause with an airy ges­ture as if to show how clean his hands would be after some soulless factotum had done the murder on his behalf. "The child must live. And yet the child must not live." He looked into the fire. "I am told, repeatedly, that you are an ingenious man, that buildings, excava­tions, waterworks, canals are merely specific instances of your gen­eral genius. I am told that there is no problem you cannot solve." Rain lashed the glass.

"So I would like you to solve this one for me." I do not believe that this was a genuine proposal. Rather, I believe my husband hated the idea of another man in his orbit being constantly touted as brilliant and was pleased at having found a way of humiliating both him and me at the same time. Only later would I look back and realise that my husband had done something crueller still. The engineer and his son were in a foreign country with neither friends, family nor connections. They were, for all the engineer''s vaunted brilliance, employees, and they were being given information which could not be allowed to spread beyond these walls. It was a death sentence. If the engineer was aware of this at the time he seemed untrou­bled.

He slipped into cogitation the way a swimmer slips into deep water, the ripples dispersing and the surface becoming still. I had the eerie sense that he had left us and gone to another place alto­gether, searching, hunting, thinking. The son''s eyes burnt a hole in the polished wooden planks of the floor. At length the engineer resurfaced and said quietly but firmly to my husband, indicating the attendants, "Tell your men to leave us." Either he was not intimidated by my husband or his absolute engagement with the so- called problem had rendered my husband''s intentions irrelevant. Once the men were gone the engineer raised his hands and paused for a few moments as if he were about to conduct a piece of music. "There is, in the royal stables, an exceedingly beautiful bull, nine hands high, with a soft, golden coat entirely free of blemishes, a gift, I believe, and a very valuable one." I glanced at the boy and saw that he was as puzzled as I was.

"Go on," said my husband. "A year ago, your wife conceived an unnatural passion for this animal." He looked directly at me while he was saying this but with no sense that I was a person looking back at him. I wondered if I had heard him correctly. "Unable to keep her feelings secret she came to me and asked me to help her have intercourse with this bull." My husband got to his feet. "This is vile." "Deliberately so.

" The engineer did not raise his voice. "Much depends on it being a story that people will listen to greedily and be desperate to pass on. As for your wife''s request, given our respective stations, I felt that I had no choice but to agree to help her." My husband looked at me. Did he think the story might be true? I do not know which of the two men I despised more at that moment. "I made a hollow cow with a comfortable interior where your wife might position herself so as to be easily pleasured." "I have heard enough." My husband walked towards the door, doubtless intending to order his men back in so that they could drag the e.