Rachaela tried to control her galloping pulse, her terror. After all, Ruth would be with him now. What, what would happen, between them?

She had run to the room, now she flew, along the landing, through the annexe, down the stair. Had the door been locked, and Ruth left waiting at the door? But Ruth was not there. And the door—stood ajar.

Rachaela entered. There was light in the room above.

She climbed sluggishly now, as if a boulder were on her back.

She came to the door, and into the doorway, and looked through.

Ruth was crouching in the middle of the room, by a table with a stand of candles that lit her as if purposely. She was quite still, her hands drawn up under her chin, and her black hair falling to the floor. She did not turn to look at Rachaela. All her attention was caught.

From a beam above the piano something dark was hanging, moving slightly to and fro. It seemed to have no form, but as it moved, there was a pale shape, a sort of face, unrecognizable, dangling off the neck from a short black cord.

His feet had struck the piano as the stool went over. That had been the sound Rachaela heard.

He hung there formlessly, like a cocoon, swinging slightly, but all the time more heavily and more slowly.

Ruth moved. She stood up.

Ts he dead?’ she said in a high thin voice.

Rachaela tried to speak. And no words came.

‘I think he’s dead,’ said Ruth.

And she hiccuped loudly, and covered her mouth in fear.

Rachaela tried to go forward, but she could not take a step.

‘Adam,’ said Ruth. She picked up the candle-branch and went closer to the hanging, swinging thing. She lifted the candles up to see. Then she screamed. She screamed continuously, and the horrible spiked soprano bleats went through Rachaela’s brain. She must make Ruth stop screaming. She took a step forward, and Ruth lifted the candles and touched them to the hanged man, and rivulets of light ran over him. He was alive with fire.

‘No—’ Rachaela floundered in the slough of poisoned air, and Ruth turned to her the face of a demon.

‘We burn our dead,’ said Ruth.

And she flung the candles round the room like flaming flowers.

The curtains went up in a fountain of fire, the chairs beside the hearth began to burn.

Ruth still had one candle. She darted at Rachaela and Rachaela cowered aside.

Ruth burst past her, the burning candle in her hand, pressing it to the doorway and the wall as she went. The door blazed up.

Rachaela stood in a room of fire.

The house was burning.

It was like a forest. Things scuttled underfoot, the fleeing mice. Ceilings broke with a great crack. Wooden objects fell, alight, and broke like blossoms.

There was so much light, like sunlight, scalding.