‘We are all sinners, I suppose,’ Harold muses, ‘even my daughters and wife were, though it is hard to fathom that they weren’t in life some light-handed preparation of angels, a shaped, fleshy mould through which beautiful spirits would solidify and burst free, on earthly death. Butterflyish creatures, they both were.’

He coughs with tears, and covers his mouth, turning away, so the men will not see him cry.

‘You will not,’ William of Roscrea says, wondering if out of the corner of his eye he sees de Flunkl stifling a giggle, ‘fathom your way out of this.’

‘There has been much disconnection in these last few days,’ de Flunkl says, his hands still raised in the air, taking great strain to exert his scant properties of leadership, ‘and in the recent events of this morning, and even in the last few days, but once we attain our goal, like a loom nearing the final weave, everything will come into vision at once, layer upon layer fitting into a sensible tapestry. Everything will make sense that preceded this, and God will thank us for soothing and fostering an emergent order on our own little, modest terrain, amidst so much disarray. We are replicating the very patterns God himself would nurture were he in an intervening mood.’

‘I deny that self-serving interpretation,’ Harold says into his sleeve, still pretending he is not crying. ‘It is nonsense. Is this infection not a more overt interventionist humour of the Lord’s? Or perhaps his temporary absence is the infection, though I do not wish to stumble into any sentiments that are not of a popish nature.’

‘My, you bore me. Even nothing is less boring than you are,’ de Flunkl says, ending the conversation. ‘We move now.’

He starts walking and, seemingly without alternatives, the others follow him, slowly. Harold comes last, picking up the sack that burdens him.

Raghnailt’s flicker of …

Raghnailt’s flicker of dreams have, since the recrudescence of the sickness, become so perpetual that she awakes each morning in such exhaustion and emotional disarray that she fears the fatigue and heaviness of these dreams will surely kill her. Ceaselessly her father haunts her, speaking to her with the sounds of lapping water. She is never certain if he is addressing her, or if he is speaking eternally, somewhere else, to himself, and she is only happening upon him whenever weariness seals her eyes and nestling sleep makes its little death within her brain.