Porredda was already in the kitchen. Polite and solicitous, she served coffee to her guests and helped them saddle their horse. She seemed to have forgotten the previous evening’s conversation, but as soon as the two women had left she made a little sign of the cross in the air. She felt as if mortal sin travelled with them.

‘Until we meet again. God be with you on your journey,’ she said, closing the door.

This time the Era women were travelling alone. They rode down into the valley, crossed its floor, and climbed up the other side – to the mountains whose glittering, snow-white peaks stood out sharply against the horizon.

It was cold. There was no wind, but the air was piercing. Enhanced by the continuous noise of rushing streams, an awesome silence reigned over the great wild valley. Short, vivid green winter grass, sprinkled with hoar-frost, covered the verges of the meandering brown pathways. The moss on the rocks smelled rank. A wild, fresh cold reanimated the valleys from which an occasional gnarled tree rose, suddenly, like a naked hermit, exposed in penance to the cold and the dawn light. On the cultivated land the earth was black, while low moss-covered walls rose and fell, twisting and turning like huge green worms.

On and on went the two women, their hands, faces, and feet frozen. They forded the stream at a wide place where the water flowed shallow and silent. Leaving the valley, they set off up the mountain. The sun peered over the horizon, bright but cold, and the mountains seemed blue against a golden sky. The wind whistled through the stunted scrub, bringing with it a smell of damp rocks.

Bachisia thought of the greedy satisfaction Martina would feel when she saw Giovanna’s trousseau. Giovanna thought of Brontu and the strange things he said when he was drunk. When the church of St Francis came in sight, white in the sun, on the slope of a hill amid frost-covered scrub, they thought of Costantino and said a Hail Mary for him. They reached home shortly after midday. Flanked by damp fields, under the frozen breath of the great snow-swathed sphinxes, Orlei was colder than Nuoro. Here the sun scarcely managed to warm the grass in the damp alleyways. The roofs were rusty with lichen and some were overgrown by vegetation. Damp darkened the walls, and the cold gave a reddish tinge to the bare trees. Purple smoke spiralled up into the endless solitude of the clear sky. As ever the little village was quiet, as if deserted. On the walls, pennywort opened its green, fleshy calyces, while speckled lizards warmed themselves in the sun and snails and gleaming beetles crawled from stone to stone.