Antonia Forest fans

I think Patrick (because of his Catholicism and interest in martyrdom) and Nicola (because she is not swept up in the romance of the Gondal) are probably the only ones in the room who've actually thought about what torture means, and that physical courage of the type that will get you to climb a dangerous cliff-face or over a high fence on a horse is not the same thing at all as withstanding pain deliberately inflicted on you by another person. It's a touch ambiguous I think whether Patrick's recoil from torture is his own, which he applies to Rupert (I think this is the case: he suddenly realises, having to imaginatively inhabit the mind of someone about to be tortured, that he would never make a martyr for the Faith himself) or whether it's simply the intellectual exercise that he represents it to the others as ('it's more interesting this way'). Personally, I wouldn't describe Nicola as physically fearless though (see her blue funk before hunting): I think Ginty is more so in a pure sense (her riding and high-diving), but Ginty goes to bits in a crisis or a row, where Nicola can keep a clear head and act logically even when very frightened (as in TMAAT).