It was her custom to appear every evening and knit publicly, as she had done the first time he saw her. He had then supposed that the business of the skein of wool wound off the supporting hands of a kneeling courtier was a formality of etiquette, like his approaching bows and the tooting trumpeters. Afterward he learned that it was a signal mark of favour, and rarely bestowed. Like all etiquettes, it was thought slightly funny and viewed with great respect. On the evening when she beckoned to him he was so far from expecting it that he had to be nudged by a stander-by before he realized what was happening. Remembering to bow and feeling painfully aware of his disproportionate size, he made the long journey toward her and crouched at her feet, holding out his hands like a suppliant. Out of her knitting bag she drew a ball of wool and two needles. ‘Attend,’ she said. ‘This concerns you. I cast on seven stitches. Two plain, two purl, two plain, one purl. And reverse. One plain, two purl, two plain, two purl. And reverse. Two plain, two purl, two plain…’

She knitted slowly and firmly. Already he saw the rib emerging. ‘And one purl. And break off.’

She bit through the thread. A squadron of flying fairies swooped down, seized hold of him, bore him up and away. He was shoved and squeezed through a twisting crevice into the outer world.

A couple of sheep took fright and galloped off, their hoofs drumming on the shallow turf. The hill had been fired, nothing remained of the heather except a few charred stumps. He would not have known where he was except for the peat hags and the hurrying burn in the valley. He watched the blood congeal on his leg, and his consciousness wandered over his body from one ache to another. The aches were specific; they corresponded with the bruises, the scratches, the punctures of being forced through an exit much too narrow for him. But there was a further ache, an underlying discomfort which corresponded with nothing and existed totally: an ache of weariness, of bodily mistrust.

‘Castellum … a fortified enclosure.’

It was a mortal voice, the voice of a person of culture! He sprang up—and almost fell over. His legs were tottering, he had lost his sense of balance. He had become an old man.

The speaker was quite close. He was dressed in black, he wore a voluminous white neckcloth, he carried a most peculiar hat in a gloved hand. He had spoken to a group of ladies, who were even more oddly dressed than he, wearing white shifts down to the ground. Their waists were under their arms204, the shifts fluttered in the wind and showed the shape of their legs. A couple of young men made up the party; they, too, had waists under their arms, and a general resemblance to clothes pegs. But all these were mortals.