And then a knocking sound begins, a sticky clamouring. It is a cold and unforgiving crunching, as different in mood from the forgiving noise of the woman who destroyed the crannóg as the warm jangling of thick church bells is to the timbre of the crow’s shriek. William listens for a source, a hand cupped round his ear.

‘This sounds like a cavalry coming,’ William says, ‘but it cannot be Trim’s men of property who we so defiled. They are too depleted and frightened of their own peasantry to organise a search party to reclaim what they have lost to us. It is a strange sound of much gnashing, like many teeth grinding themselves against one another and into smallness.’

‘It is the baby rat I stepped on come back to haunt me,’ Saint John cries out, beating at his chest.

William looks down at Saint John, and shakes his head. ‘I envy you,’ he says, ‘for your retardation is so total it is pleasurable, and I would not disturb it with any reasoning talk. Harold will mind you, for he is caring. Stay with him and you will be protected. If your death must come I hope it is as unknowable and unexpected to you as your own birth was, and for you, Saint John, as your own life is, which you misunderstand so happily. Perhaps death could not even strike one so stupid as you as a violation.’

Saint John, on his hands and knees, grunts, and then looks towards the sun again. He falls back in the pain of its glare as though it has struck him down with a quick, invisible hand.

As William goes round the corner, Saint John’s ears are haunted by the cracking noises that sound like manifested hell, and on his hands and knees, he looks towards the tall man. He sees the remnants of Mary’s wake, the glimmerings of blood and alcohol that have not yet evaporated reaching round the corner to where the dead mare lies, and then he sees William disappear and he shivers, believing that William has been devoured by jaws made of sunshine.

It is almost …

It is almost cool amidst the foliage, beneath this panoramic, shifting roof of treetops. Monsieur Hacquelebacq has grown calm now. Sparse light falls, latticed and intricate, through the foliage. He drags his fingers through some of it. These trees are thick, bustling and lively, waving at one another perpetually, in friendly greetings. Little light gets through the overlap of leaves, but that which does is like a sneaking thing, successful through many artful diversions and feints. He wants to applaud the spangles that illuminate his eyes, the flashing light that made it through these breathing woods.