‘Do you hear the noises she cannot help but make when her desire for me is this great?’ Colca says to William. ‘She does moan vociferously because I would nearly turn her inside out with the power of my thrusting. I am more a battering ram than I am a man. When I make love to her she does have to hold onto the edge of our marriage bed lest she is propelled into some neighbouring parish by my great strength; so you may cast far from your mind any supposition from Kells that I have made love with any goats belonging to the Fitzsimmons family or, indeed, any of the migrating swans of Moynagh lake.’

William ignores him, listening instead to the words the woman is speaking under her breath. He cannot catch all of it, but what he does gather is that she is reminiscing that once high-born Gaels would foam at the gob for her, men with balls the size of those of rams’ before they are emptied into a flocks of wandering ewes; balls that dangle loosely between legs like the thickest Andalusian oranges in summer do hang in groves before they are plucked by young maidens’ fingers; and that their cocks were set aloft like ancient ruins upon grassy mounds, soft and elegant, resembling nothing so much as the delicate curvature of a swan’s neck. When she has finished her small soliloquy she says to her husband, ‘Your mother wants you, she feels ill.’

Colca’s face collapses in worry and he hurries inside the house. Once he is inside Alannah pushes the door closed after him.

‘Does your horse need shoeing?’ she asks William. ‘I will have to do it if it wants doing. Let me find my crate to reach up to the forge. It will take some time to heat the fire, though.’

The forge is full of spent ash, long since gone cold. Thin streaks of blackened soot streak the chimney like reaching ghosts that were transfixed by a heat they could not escape, their shapes imprinted on the stone.

‘Your forge has not been lit in some time,’ William says. ‘And yet I did hear your husband working on something.’

‘He does work, but he has not worked as a farrier this last year,’ she says. ‘No one would trust him with an animal. Fortunately, de Fonteroy’s residue is bountiful enough to keep us in scraps.’

William looks towards the anvil, the yellow dust upon it. ‘You know that this Ambrosio, whose wife you offered succour to,’ he says, ‘and who is a lunatic, keeps three bodies in his quarters?’

‘That is nothing,’ Alannah says, waving her hand at him, ‘barely worthy of remark. De Fonteroy will remove those bodies in a few hours.’

‘He did not show us the bodies’ papers, so I left.’

‘I have never understood the Norman fascination with paper,’ she says, ‘as though it does not tell as many lies as tongues.’