‘I’ll hold you to that. And if it looks like you’ll come short, you can spend some time shovelling snow. You and Big Lad. Put something into the community instead of taking it out,’ Noble Seatree said, and waggled the book. ‘So, what’s this one about?’

‘It’s a collection of devotional material. Sermons, prayers and songs. Some of the songs are very old, including chants that may date from the time when our ancestors were slaves and worked in the fields around bear settlements.’

It was a small book and not especially well bound, the pages buckled, the leather poor quality, and scuffed and stained. Pilgrim had taken to hiding his best finds on the shelves and setting out the dross for the constable. The small pleasure of cheating him was worth the risk of being found out and punished. And besides, he was honouring the terms of his exile by saving the valuable volumes from the constable’s predation.

Noble Seatree weighed the little book in his hand, then put it down and picked up something else. Pilgrim felt a clean cold wave of shock pass through him. It was the map. He had been poring over it last night, as he sometimes did, looking for things he might have missed, dreaming about an eager reaction to publication of a monograph about it, fame in the right circles, elevation to a mastership … Silly fantasies, but potent. He’d studied it for only a little while, and then carefully rolled it up and got on with his work on Master Able’s manuscript, but although he’d put away the manuscript and notes he had forgotten about the map, and now the constable was ripping off the string that fastened it, flakes cracking from its edges, and shaking it out, more flakes flying, and pressing it flat on the table.

‘What do we have here?’ he said.

‘It isn’t anything,’ Pilgrim said, dry-mouthed. ‘A copy of a copy of a copy. And badly damaged by damp, as you can see.’

Noble Seatree was leaning over it, hands pressed on either side to keep it flat, no doubt staining it with grease and sweat. Pilgrim could see a fresh crack had opened near the middle, like a little mouth, or a wound.

The constable looked sideways at Pilgrim. He was smiling. He thought that he had an excuse to improve him. To make an appointment with a snow shovel on the streets of Stonehaven.

He said, ‘A copy of what, exactly?’

‘A map, obviously.’ Pilgrim’s entire skin was tingling and he felt as if he was sliding backwards into an enormous vacancy. ‘A copy of a map made by bears. That’s why there are translations printed beneath the bear script. If it was an original, there would only be bear script.’

‘Looks like the Union,’ Noble Seatree said.