Raghnailt winces; tries to ignore the remark. ‘He always said the world dragged on regardless of our feelings towards it,’ she says ‘Perhaps you are more an extension of me than I formerly believed, because I too have always felt apart and distant from the masses; and for this I want it to be true that we are living in the last days. I want the world to die around me, and I gave you this feeling through my blood when you grew in me. Your pain is my fault.’

‘Stop this,’ Colca says. ‘You would wear a thing down to its very nub by talking over it so much. I am reformed and we are reconciled now; all will be well.’

It took the death of Raghnailt’s husband for her to learn that other people did not have her depths of feeling, that they did not imbue meaning into every social gathering they found themselves in; that little flowers and the noises of the wind meant nothing – or perhaps less – to them; that the offences she felt she accidentally gave often never struck their pride or even their notice; that they did not cry at nights thinking of relatives who had passed decades ago; that the loss of a loved one could be mourned and felt, but not destroy living forever thereafter.

She let her stillborn children destroy her life, imagined her own body to be only capable of producing mutilation and death; and could never reach the living child that was left her. Perhaps if I had spent more time playing with him, she thinks; less time trying to keep him safe, then we would have more memories to hold us together. I made so many mistakes that still haunt me. I never repeated them, but there were always more lying in wait for me. If I could somehow tell my boy that I have been in mourning for more than half my life; that he has never truly met his own mother, but no one could understand this, even I, who have done it to myself, can’t understand it.

‘Mother,’ Colca says, his eyes widening. ‘Someone is coming.’

The door bursts open for the second time this day, and a tall, sallow man enters. His bearing is refined, and though he is ugly it is in a pleasant, trustworthy sort of way.

‘What is that noise of wretchedness?’ the newly entered man says.

Raghnailt hadn’t even noticed Mary’s wailing and howling she was so lost in thought.

‘You enter my mother’s house?’ Colca says, grasping about for a moment, searching for something. ‘My mallet, I have forgotten it outside.’

William of Roscrea looks at his own empty hands; shakes his head.

‘I, too, have left your mallet behind,’ he says.

‘Get out,’ Colca yells.

‘What torture do you inflict on women in this hovel?’ William says. ‘Unhand this girl, and deliver her to safety.’