He turned away from the door and went a little way down the hall, where there was another door. In every respect it was identical to the second kitchen door. The crucial difference being that it was the right shape for his body. He went out of the house and into the dark.
At night the trail on the scarp seemed shorter. He took a narrower path down the hill and out toward the ocean to avoid any sharp-eyed gaolers but the going felt easier, so much so that he didn’t have to use his cane for maybe a half-mile, and even then its heft supported him in a way he couldn’t remember it having done before. It was cold, but the weight of his regalia kept his temperature up, and his joints didn’t ache much, maybe just a shallow twinge of the spine. It was a full moon, so bright he could see every rock beneath his boots. He was probably a mile out then, almost to the breadknife inlet, when he noticed he was no longer wearing the knapsack. Maybe he’d dropped it along the trail without noticing, and it was lying somewhere half-covered in dust and ants big as sugar cubes. Or maybe he’d left it just outside the second kitchen door that fit him wrong, or at the top of the stairs, or maybe it had never gone out of the study, because he knew, even then, that he couldn’t bring himself to leave. Which possibly had something to do with the feel of the tilted mahogany table under his weathered hands, the smell of sea-stripped playing cards. It wasn’t out of love or fear. It wasn’t a bad game he’d been dealt, only a static one. He couldn’t judge whether he should die or not, guillotined or executed by firing squad, or live out the rest of his lonely days here, or be castrated. How could you say what you deserved, how could anyone?
He came to the inlet now, and the tide was out. There was a gentle slope down the cliff. He stopped to take off his boots and socks before descending so he could feel the fine sand between his toes. You could hear the sound of waves like a clock. He slid onto the beach and his cane sank into the ground unsteadily so he ditched it. From near the low cliff the flat seemed like it stretched out forever before hitting the water’s edge but he walked forward anyway, picturing the sand sprouting wildflowers, everywhere laced with them. His limp now pronounced. His feet hurt, and his back. They would never stop hurting, probably. As he went he stripped, first the jacket with its epaulets and clasps, then the iron-pressed trousers, his shirtsleeves and underthings. The air struck right through him and goosepimples broke out all along his arms and the back of his neck. His hands shook and twitched. Sand dampened underfoot. Now his feet were coated with it, and the waves were close enough for him to make out the silver froth clearly with the moon shining like that. And finally the water came up over his toes with a shock of cold. He stopped, catching his breath, naked in the shallows, imagining the schooner that was supposed to take him away, to his old life or a new one, maybe sailing empty, northward, with a skeleton crew or no crew at all, a ghost ship creaking in the waves. He stood there without knowing what he was waiting for. Maybe nothing. Only that the sea broke around his ankles, that the wind was blowing, and the tide was starting to come back in.