Pantheon. Sam Bourne

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       SAM BOURNE

      PANTHEON

       For my mother, both the gentlest and strongest person I know

      Table of Contents

       Title Page

       Dedication

       Chapter One

       Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       Chapter Twenty-Five

       Chapter Twenty-Six

       Chapter Twenty-Seven

       Chapter Twenty-Eight

       Chapter Twenty-Nine

       Chapter Thirty

       Chapter Thirty-One

       Chapter Thirty-Two

       Chapter Thirty-Three

       Chapter Thirty-Four

       Chapter Thirty-Five

       Chapter Thirty-Six

       Chapter Thirty-Seven

       Chapter Thirty-Eight

       Chapter Thirty-Nine

       Chapter Forty

       Chapter Forty-One

       Chapter Forty-Two

       Chapter Forty-Three

       Chapter Forty-Four

       Author’s Note

       Acknowledgements

       About the Author

       By the same author

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

      ONE

       Oxford, July 8 1940

      It hurt him, this journey, it pained him, yet day after day he came back for more punishment. Every morning, whether the skies were dark with rain or, like today, lit by searing sunshine, James Zennor would be here on the water shortly after dawn, sculling alone on the Isis stretch of the Thames.

      James loved these early mornings. The air smelled fresh, the sky was empty, everything was quiet. A family of moor-hens puttered by the water’s edge, but even they made no sound as if, like him, they preferred to keep their counsel.

      The boat was gliding now, James’s wrists flat and straight, the feathering motion – twisting the oars so that they entered the water vertically before slicing horizontally through the air – all but automatic. He gazed at the river ahead, sparkling as if jewelled by the sunlight. At moments like this, when the true exertion had only just begun, when the sky was blue and the breeze was as cool as a caress, he could almost forget what had happened to his ruined body. He could almost feel like the man he used to be.

      Barring that one, fateful, year abroad, he had come to this same spot for a decade, ever since he had been an undergraduate, grateful for a place in his college team. He had even become the stroke for Oxford against Cambridge in a famously close boat