Alannah smiles. ‘I must say you are as intelligent as any Norman man I have ever met,’ she says. ‘You guessed the powder, and you are not overly repulsed by the practice. I expected to be rid of you by teasing you, making you eat it.’

‘I am not surprised that some Gaels,’ William says, ‘their Christian inclinations quelled by this last string of popes’ hatred towards them, have returned to their older practices, but I did not know this one still existed. I thought it a myth, though I have heard speak of it.’

‘How is it that you know so much of us?’

‘I am an interpreter of your languages.’

‘And what,’ she asks, ‘is a person of any talent doing in the town of Nobber?’

‘I take wages from a weak-hearted noble who would buy properties and lands in the towns more heavily struck by the sickness. He needed men, but I am done with him. He is a boy, a fool, and I smell death off him. But you, why is such a-one as you here?’

‘I was traded away a few years ago for a few days of peace by my uncle,’ she says, ‘and found myself in this unfortunate place. I have been made Normanic under duress, and have spent the last three years living in servitude to this farrier, eating unclean foods and wearing ugly clothes like the kind you find me in now, with no one to talk to except my husband’s mother, listening to ballads that drunken peasants compose. They have no ear for melody; they only care for its dancing.’

William uses the opportunity of her speaking to closer examine her face. Her mouth is moist, as though primped with beeswax. Her eyebrows, darker than her hair, are sharp and defined, giving her a stern look. He would give anything to have her on top of him, but he has always believed himself to be a gentleman.

‘How would such a beauty as you belong to a farrier? I, myself, would only trade you for a high-born man.’