‘Yes, I think I saw him on a stuffed horse. And he’s been following me.’

Anna shook her head gravely. ‘Camillo is very old,’ she said quite seriously. ‘Very naughty. But harmless as a silly child.’

‘It wasn’t Camillo.’

Anna hesitated. She said, ‘There is a large cat in the house. A nocturnal beast. We see it rarely, it leads its own life.’

Rachaela shook her head.

‘I don’t think a cat—’

The door opened.

‘Here is Sylvian,’ said Anna. ‘Sylvian, here is Rachaela.’

The eraser of books came forward slowly, his hands clasped at his chest, eating eyes on Rachaela.

‘I’ve been wanting to meet you,’ said Rachaela. ‘Why do you rule through all the words?’

‘The words,’ repeated Sylvian. He looked too fragile to be interrogated but this did not stop her. They were all fragile as the chitinous wings of grasshoppers, and predatory as locusts.

Tn the library. And there was a globe with scratches across the continents.’

‘Words mean nothing,’ said Sylvian, ‘they gather like the dust.’

‘Words convey concepts and dreams,’ said Rachaela.

‘Also nothing.’

‘So you deface the books.’

‘I correct them,’ said Sylvian in his cracked firm voice. He unclasped his hands and spread them out, ‘When I have finished, the library will be sound.’

‘I hope I can find some portion you haven’t damaged,’ said Rachaela idly.

‘The north wall,’ he told her, helpful. ‘I have yet to work there. A long task.’

‘Sylvian does what he feels he must,’ said Anna, the translator. ‘I’m sorry if you wished to read the books. But I send for books from the town. Allow me to order some for you, if you will give me some idea—’

‘Are the books delivered here?’ Rachaela asked swiftly.

‘Oh, no. The van brings them to the village, and Carlo carries them back for me.’

‘I see.’

‘And the globe,’ said Stephan, smiling benignly. ‘That isn’t the work of Sylvian. Alice scratched at it with a hat pin.’

‘The places from which the family has been driven out,’ said Anna.

‘The pogroms,’ said Rachaela.

‘Oh, Sasha uses that word,’ said Anna. ‘It’s a word she finds applicable. It will do.’

‘So many countries drove out the Scarabae,’ said Rachaela, the globe suddenly vivid in her mind.

‘Why?’

‘The family is ancient,’ said Anna.

‘And unpopular,’ chuckled Stephan.

‘Superstitious fears of the ignorant,’ said Anna.

‘Of what?’

‘We are different,’ said Anna. ‘You’ve seen. We keep close, and have our own ways.’

‘The windows here,’ Rachaela said at random.

‘Some have come from our other houses. We are safe here.’

‘But the windows,’ persisted Rachaela, ‘scenes from a Bible of hell.’

‘Just so,’ said Anna simply. ‘Several were broken by the mob and have been pieced together by artisans. Not all are old. Some new ones were fashioned.’

‘And you don’t like the views from the house.’

Anna said, ‘It’s the daylight we dislike.’