Then Dorian put Ruth’s hand into the hand of Adamus and tied them together with a white silk ribbon, an old ribbon stained along its clarity with age.

‘Remember now, whatever comes, you are promised to each other before witnesses. You may take no other to you, but must keep faith until the hour of marriage and union. So are you bound.’

Ruth looked up into Adamus’s face.

She smiled, cunningly.

‘You must say now whether you are agreeable and will remain true to this binding. Ruth, answer first.’

‘I am agreeable and will remain true,’ said Ruth.

‘And Adamus.’

‘I am agreeable,’ Adamus said, ‘and will remain true.’

Dorian untied the white stained ribbon.

‘Though the tie is undone, the vow is not undone. Let all here witness this.’

I witness it, Rachaela thought, they will stay bound to one another. She will be taller when she marries him. It won’t look so perverse then. Or worse perhaps.

She thought: What is he thinking? Is his mind a blank?

Adamus bent and kissed Ruth on the lips, lightly. She did not close her eyes, she kept them open and drank him in.

Cheta came forward in her brooch. She carried a small cake on a plate. Adamus broke it in half and Ruth ate one half and he the other.

Michael came up with a glass of red wine. They each took a mouthful from the glass.

‘Write your names in the book.’

Adamus dipped the pen and wrote, Ruth took the pen and wrote after him.

Has she put Ruth Day from force of habit?

But Dorian did not query the entry.

Adamus and Ruth, hand in hand, turned away from the table. Ruth gave Adamus the second rose; he put it in his buttonhole.

How terrifying they looked, like erroneous models on a wedding cake, the cold sheer bridegroom and his tiny sprite of a scarlet bride.

Anna stepped up to Ruth and gave her a small package.

Adamus released Ruth’s hand.

She undid the gift in her usual neat, greedy way.

A rhinestone locket—it surely could not be diamonds. Ruth held out the locket to Adamus, and he fastened it around her throat.

The others approached Ruth. They gave her gifts: earrings, and books, and lengths of material, ornaments and objects of coloured glass.

Only I have nothing to give. Rachaela imagined herself as the thirteenth fairy godmother, stepping forward to present the gift of death.

Did she want Ruth dead in this moment? Was it really so bad, this idiotic ceremony and the little girl dressed like a bride?

The little girl piled the table with her trophies. Now and then she showed them to Adamus, the best trophy of all. He gravely assented.

Now Camillo was going forward. His present too was wrapped. Ruth tore off the wrapping eagerly. She was acquisitive. She ignored his figure in its armour.

Out of the wrapping came a strange metal-and-wood contraption.