Into this discomfort stepped a young man with the voice of a fallen angel.

He sang acapella to begin; long, high, stretched sounds that I barely recognised for the words they were. My breath caught in my chest when the piano struck its first chord alongside him.

Mayor Eder leaned close to my ear and whispered, ‘My daughter’s fiancé.’

His hair was the colour I imagined the dawn sun to be. Even from halfway across the room his brilliant green eyes revealed the silks worn by the guests for what they really were: pale imitations. Without his voice he would have been a striking, if diminutive boy. With it he was a colossus.

He sang and though I knew the song, I did not recognise it at first. The arrangement was dramatically different and he put his stresses in such surprising places. If the effect had been anything less than breath-taking, it would have been disastrous. I felt a shiver along the back of my neck and when the song finished the room gave a collective sigh as if waking from a dream.

I applauded with such vigour I spilled my wine, but I did not care. I saw ladies dab their eyes, removing their masks to do so, and beside me the Father was so moved the colour had quite drained from his face.

‘Father, are you all right?’ I said.

‘Every time I believe I am prepared, that I know what is to come.’ He shook his head.

‘Astonishing, isn’t he, our Olesca?’ Eder said.

He sang twice more. I could have wept – it was too much, it was too little. I left the drawing room, a stranger on my arm, in a walking daze.

*

We followed the procession, my partner and I, into the dining room. She was dressed in a sprawling, tiered beige dress that resembled an extravagant cake. She made no attempt at conversation – I had the impression she was similarly affected by the performance. She sat to my left, her husband to her left, and the magistrate’s wife was to my right. It was no small consolation that both ladies were married. I had worried some effort would be made to find me a match among the eligible women of Drekenford. Perhaps I was too old for that consideration.

I took my seat, an ornately carved work of spiralling heavy wood, and had just enough wherewithal to be impressed by the dining room. A huge hearth dominated the opposite wall and provided plenty of warmth and light in what may have otherwise been an oppressively and darkly decorated space. A deep green papered the walls, putting me in mind of the pine forests that surrounded the town. No doubt this was deliberate. Bursting from these vistas were a number of stag heads, stuffed, and even – for one or two of the larger specimens – gilded, the tips of their antlers leafed in gold. Like the Eder’s doorknocker, I felt these hunting trophies aggressive in countenance.