And William of Roscrea sees de Flunkl does not. This young man who he serves, skinny in the shanks, with down on his upper lip that resembles the paltry remnants of a flayed rabbit’s fur, grows more ridiculous by the hour; more childish and stupid and greedy; his feats of language becoming more laughable, more heightened, as the bizarreness of life stacks itself up in extenuation against them on this vaguest of quests. It is as though this Osprey fool believes that by the steadfastness and formality of his flighty language and by the endlessness of his ambition he could somehow shift matter and counterbalance the panoramic breakdown that engulfs them. William of Roscrea can also feel Harold Tuite’s hatred of the young man, and though Harold is the gentlest of men, he feels this hatred will soon explode into violence with the hot pressure of the endless sin they are all building together.

This William, who is thinking this way, is tall, slender and pale, with sunken cheeks of a sallow colour. He has looked ill his whole life, but now the rest of the population have normalised his odd hue. He has a long, crooked nose that was broken in a tavern’s brawl not of his own making. Everything in his life that is broken was not broken by him, but he always let it happen without protest if it seemed judicious at the time. He was once lively, now he is just alive, and this, he feels, is a great achievement, one worth maintaining.

‘We are almost there,’ William suggests, wondering if this alone could diffuse the tension gathering about their persons. He wants to cool wounds that are being made, but does not want to exert great effort, or take sides, in doing so.

‘Much strangeness is on the world,’ Harold Tuite says. ‘Much strangeness has always been on the world, but now the world is growing tired. That is the difference between now and the famines and wars and floods of the last twenty harvests. Now we are being expelled from the earth. And I want to know why. Why are the Gaels so strong? What milk are they reared on? What magic comes through the animally large, dark teat of their wives? What have I done? Not to be alive, but to not be dead. What distinction is there to draw between me and the dead? Regarding merit, health, humours, character, loyalty, am I not worse than so many perished?’

‘You are not responsible for the humongous death that stalks and empties the towns, if that is what you are asking,’ William says. ‘That is obvious. It is nature, and nature is being most natural at present.’

De Flunkl yawns and stretches demonstratively, brushing cherry blossom petals off his cap and his shoulders.

‘And,’ de Flunkl adds, ‘you may still get your chance to die.’