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naked, badly dismembered men, each with limbs and organs floating beside their torso and linked to it by threads like cobwebs. Only one body exhibited movement: eyes which slowlyblinked in time with a mouth opening and shutting like the mouth of a fish. The face had no intelligence in it. Wat abruptly turned his back on these things. The ceiling went clear and admitted sunlight again.
    â€œYou can mend them?” he asked in a voice shrill with unbelief.
    â€œMibby. Perhaps. It will take years but they’re just lads.”
    â€œMirren, most of Charlie’s head is gone.”
    â€œHe’ll grow a new one if we can restore the heart. The new brain will have his character if not his memories.”
    â€œOur memories are our character, Mirren.”
    â€œThen the mother and sisters who love him will restore his memories, Wat Dryhope. We’ll give him back all the good things the war sliced away, but you won’t be one of them, Wattie! When he starts thinking again we’ll only remind him of what’s harmless!”
    â€œYou’re so maddened by grief that you’re blethering, Mirren. I know it’s a cruel injustice that I’m almost unhurt and your lads are nearly dead, but I’m the man who argued for what would have saved them. They refused it. And have you forgot that bloody Daddy Jardine was born and bred in this house by Craig Douglas women? Our general’s obstrapulous conceit wasnae nourished by the aunties of Dryhope.”“No woman on earth nourished Jardine’s conceit!” cried Mirren, “He got it in the Warrior house. We never scorned him for his wee-ness but other soldiers did until he showed he was spunkier than them and could take knocks without squealing. So they made him their pet, then elected him boss, and after that Craig Douglas never saw him again — except through the public eye — until two days back when the Red Cross gave us his remains with sixteen other corpses and the pieces you’re feart to turn round and see. Women had no part in making a bloody hero of Jardine Craig Douglas. Yes, he fathered weans in half the houses along Yarrow but he only wanted women for one thing. Like all soldiers the only folk he really loved were men!”
    Wat heard this with bowed head then said, “All true, Aunt Mirren, but women arenae wholly innocent of the war game. You don’t take to fighting like we do — the world holds hardly a dozen tribes of professional Amazons — but many girls, aye, and many women are daft about soldiers. I’m a graceless brute so when I came home from the stars few women outside Dryhope house would look at me — not until I fought for Ettrick and showed some talent.”
    â€œI cannae be fair to you, Wat,” the mother said drying her eyes, “Go to Nan.”
    He walked swiftly to the other opaque-walled room, looking ceilingward to avoid eye-contact with anyone before reaching it. A teenage girl scampered out as he was about to enter, followed by another. He went in and shut the door by pulling across a heavy tapestry curtain. Then he faced the woman inside and said, “See me Nan! I’m a rare animal now, an Ettrick warrior with nothing obvious missing. But I cannae move my fingers and I feel nine tenths dead and as sexless as a neep. Do you still like Wat Dryhope?”
    She smiled and beckoned.

    Next morning she wakened Wat by prising his arms from around her and saying, “You neednae hold so tight, I won’t run away.”
    She slipped out of bed and pulled on a long loose shirt. He raised himself by an elbow to watch. Playing a keyboard invisible to him she made a clear round window in the wall before her and raised it until it framed a hawk perched on the top branch of a Scotch pine and the summit of Whitelaw against a pale sky. By lightfrom this Nan opened elegant boxes holding the materials of a meal and made breakfast.
    Â Â Â 
    She was nearly forty