She will need a scribe. Someone who will walk around the factory and not simply assume that he has seen destruction, but will open his eyes and note down the details

IT is dawn by the time they come to call her. Dawn, and too late.

Leonora has been sitting by the window — another sleepless night had come to call — so she sees them as they come through the streets, a little knot of men with lanterns bobbing in their hands, even though they barely need them now, for the summer sun rises early.

Leonora cranes her neck out of the window and narrows her eyes better to focus.

She recognizes the foreman of the wool factory. What has happened?

Kindling the lanterns was a delay.

Perhaps a delay that was justified, for who knows what time they left their homes.

It could have been dark. It could be that they were not lax in their obligations.

They bang on the door, and she is swept out into the night with them. She knows, without them even telling her, where they are going, and she is not afraid. Only, these men, as they pull together words and stories, insert details and then contradict them, foist their theories into their tale — they fill her with impatience.

“We discovered it this morning.”

“We heard noises in the middle of the night.”

“The damage is considerable.”

“It is only surface damage.”

“It is the Turks.”

“It is the townspeople.”

“It is a small band of renegade boys, come up from Jerusalem to make mischief.”

She listens, biting back her tongue so as not to point out the contradictions in their story: How could the noise be heard at night, when the factory is located well away from the residential area? Her mind works fast. Perhaps they heard the band of boys, men, Turks threading through the streets of the town, bent on destruction.

She sighs. She will need a scribe. Someone who will walk around the factory and not simply assume that he has seen destruction, but will open his eyes and note down the details: which machines were damaged, which supplies destroyed. It is only by seeing the facts that there is a chance of piecing together a story.

She strides, and even though sometimes when she walks her knees ache and her left hip throbs, today she feels nothing.

Only impatience.