Sublime

paths should cross at certain times on certain days. That they’d become friends seemed to her both natural and miraculous. From the minute she’d seen him blinking behind the hard dark ranks of Bethesda’s pews, she’d felt he belonged to her: evidently God had ordained the whole business.

The Sultana, or ‘queen’, of Patani made a deep impression on Floris. ‘A comely oulde woman nowe about three score yeares…she was tall of person and full of majestie.’ She was also ‘a good sport’, thought nothing of hunting wild buffalo in the forest, and was a great patron of the arts. Her dance troupe was the best Floris had ever seen; and when by