‘That’s not a bad mornin’ at all, Doctor Sot,’ she always croaked when he paid a house call now. He tended with Rita to strap on the blood pressure monitor a little too tightly. There was temptation to open one of the naggins before he got it to the counter but he denied himself and bore the small devil’s caper.

‘You’d want a good class of a pelt on you,’ he said to the girl at the till. ‘Brass monkeys weather.’

But she was an eastern and as she blankly scanned his items he realised that pelt was perhaps a little rich for her vocabulary, not to mind brass monkeys.

‘Pelt like a bear,’ he said. ‘For the cold, I mean? Look it! Here’s Papa Bear in his lovely warm pelt!’

He flapped his arms delightedly against his sides to indicate Papa Bear’s cosiness.

‘Is fifty-three euro eighty-nine cent,’ she said.

In the Megane, he opened a naggin and he took a good nip for its dulling power. He saw a distressed van come coughing and spluttering into the car park. The rainbow colours it was painted in could not disguise the distress. It was driven by a young man with braided hair. Many small children, all shaven-headed, wriggled and crawled along the dashboard and against the windscreen. The man climbed down from the van and slid back the side door. More shaven-headed children poured out and more braided adults. These, Doctor Sot realised, must be the new-age travellers the paper had been on about. They were camped in the hills above town. On Slieve Bo, if he recalled. They were colourful and unclean and wore enormous military boots. There were bits of metal in their faces. They made a motley parade as they went across the car park. The driver remained at the side door of the van and spoke loudly to someone inside. A young woman poked her head out and spoke back to him. He huffed and he gestured and he followed the rest of the travellers across the car park. She remained. She stepped out and leaned against the van and rolled a cigarette from a pouch. Her hair also was in braids and piled high and she wore striped leggings tucked into her boots. Doctor Sot’s breath caught as he watched her. She was remarkably beautiful and vital but there was something else that drew him, too. She felt his stare and returned it. She smiled and waved at him. Sot slugged hard on the naggin and took off.

There are wolves in our valley – this is what Doctor Sot knew. We do not know when they will attack us but attack us they surely will, with their hackles heaped and drool sheering from between their yellow teeth. The careful study of sickness had taken a great toll and weakened him but just a moment’s view of the young woman had lifted him again to his calling, and Doctor Sot wasn’t back across the White Lady’s River before he had a plan formed.