‘You speak English?’ he asked, because I’d paused. ‘The tongue of a civilised race?’

‘We don’t speak it much out this way,’ I replied, thinking carefully as I hadn’t used my English for a while and was a little rusty. ‘I thought we were at peace, you and we?’

‘That Fodder of yours tore up the accord when he cracked m’boy on the nut,’ he said. ‘We are merely lost travellers, old stick, trying to make our way back to the warm embrace of home and hearth.’

All Villains were English, and descendants of the upper classes who had been pushed to the edges of the Albion Peninsula after the devastating Class Wars of the nineteenth century. They had preserved their culture down the years, defiant against their victors. Large houses, crab-apple marmalade and trout-kippers for breakfast, hunting, shooting, fishing, balls, society gatherings. But most importantly, they liked servants and aggressively maintained their banned titles. Almost every Villain in Mid-Wales was a duke or a lord or a baroness or some such.

‘Is your way home through the museum?’ I asked.

He smiled.

‘I’m not going to argue the toss, old stick,’ he said, ‘you should be grateful I’m going to spare your life. A few positions have opened up in the household and someone of your youth would be perfect to learn the complexities of domestic service. Did you know there are six different types of fork, each for a specific purpose? How’s your washing and ironing, by the way? We can start you off in the scullery.’

‘Terrible – and my cleaning and cooking are not very good either.’

He grinned.

‘Excellent – your training starts as soon as we get back. Ten years should make a fine servant of you; perhaps as a pastry chef. A lifetime in the service of others is a lifetime well served.’

It wasn’t quite how I would have interpreted the saying. He took the Schtumper from me, then my Bambi. My eyes flicked from the Villain to the empty snowstorm behind, hoping for Fodder, and the Villain guessed my thoughts perfectly.

‘Your large friend will have a shocker of a headache come the morning,’ he said. ‘The larger they are, the harder they fall.’

He pushed his Bambi hard into my head and stepped closer. The scar on his face looked like an untidy weld, and the folds in his skin were ingrained with dirt. The gap where his nose had been was only semi-healed; I could see the pink of his sinuses inside – they moved when he breathed like the gills of a stranded fish.

‘Well, mustn’t dawdle,’ he said. ‘The devil makes work for idle hands. After you – I insist.’