‘You think she won’t listen. But I’ve lived with your child. She’s interested only in herself, and what can entertain her. This is a new and fascinating game, but she’ll tire of it. She won’t wear it, being the brood queen of your hive.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘You think your Scarabae sorcery is the strongest thing of all? You’re just a puppet. You have no mind. You’re nothing. Their seed machine.’

‘So many angry words,’ he said.

The beauty of him struck inside her like a colossal chord. She longed to go to him, to lean, to lie against him. To be told this did not matter. She wanted his arms, his mouth and his body, as much as she had ever wanted them in that day and night of preposterous ecstasy. Damn Ruth, what was she—a grain of sand, a mote of dust.

But she would never let him touch her again. She would not let him have Ruth for his passionless and raging lust.

‘Well, I’ve finished now,’ she said, and she went away from him and down the stair to the door of the tower, which like Ruth she opened and closed behind her.

Two hot days passed before she found Ruth alone.

Rachaela had seen her daughter in the evenings at dinner, after which she went away to the piano lesson with Adamus, vanishing again. Rachaela had gone over the house, looked into the garden where the briars climbed the cedar tree and roses perched upon its boughs. Even into the red bedroom she had looked, and seen the window with the crimson Madonna, the tiaraed child, and the golden kings with diadems and animal faces. But Ruth was not there.

On the third day Rachaela walked out on to the heath, and Ruth was sitting by the standing stone. She wore a day dress from the turn of the century with little puffed sleeves. There was no make-up on her face and her hair was done up in a ponytail.

Rachaela went to her and stood, letting her shadow fall into the sun-scorched grass.

Butterflies were in the tobaccoy bracken. Birds made an aerial display across the pale blue roof of the sky.

‘I want to talk to you, Ruth.’

‘Yes,’ said Ruth.

Rachaela sat down on the grass facing her child. Hers. This person in the dress.

‘I suppose you’re enjoying yourself here.’

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Ruth.

They made you very welcome. They’ve given you lots of presents. They let you do as you like. And no school.’

‘And the piano,’ said Ruth, helping her.

‘And the piano of course. And Adamus.’

‘He lets me call him Adam.’

‘I know. Have you noticed, Ruth, that people are often kind to you, nice, when they want you to do something for them?’

Ruth looked at Rachaela. Her look was frankly speculative. And what do you want? She replied, ‘Sometimes.’