Colca picks up one of the jugs, and hurls the residue into William’s face, and William, coughing and blinded, stumbles about backwards, looking like some faded ghost.

‘That was two months’ eating you’ve made me put in your face,’ Colca says.

He falls upon William, throwing jabs into his guts. Now that the two men are rolling on the ground, Raghnailt can see Alannah standing behind them, an incurious gaze on her face; Mary falls silent.

‘Don’t hurt him,’ Raghnailt says to her son.

Colca, both his hands pressed on William’s face, looks back at her.

‘You wouldn’t have me stick an intruder who violates our privacy?’ he says, breathless from his exertions.

‘No violence in the house,’ Raghnailt says.

Colca leans close to the man’s face.

‘It was the Fitzsimmons woman, wasn’t it?’ he yells, shaking him.

‘Leave him go,’ Raghnailt says.

Colca slaps William once across the face.

‘You are a brute,’ Colca says.

He gets up off him, and William turns on his belly, coughing and red-faced behind the residue.

‘What do you want, man?’ Raghnailt asks.

William wipes some tears out of his eyes, rubs the residue off his face and spits out the sick taste of death from his mouth. The small house he finds himself in is disgusting, worse than any peasant’s. He is shocked to find a tradesman’s house in such disrepair.

‘I heard a woman in great pain,’ he says. ‘I did what any man would.’

Alannah walks inside, stepping over William’s legs, and sits next to Raghnailt.

‘What have you done to this woman,’ William asks, ‘chained like this?’

‘It is for her own safety, and ours,’ Raghnailt says. ‘You would not understand. Things are not as simple as we would like them to be.’

‘There is no explaining this away. I’ve never seen its likes, the poor girl.’

‘Watch your tongue when speaking to my mother,’ Colca says.

He clenches a fist, and William crawls backwards away from him.

‘No,’ Raghnailt says.

Colca looks at her, takes a deep breath.

‘You have come to listen to my story?’ Mary says to William. ‘Will you listen?’

‘Of course I will, my lady,’ he says, ‘though currently I am somewhat compromised.’

Something is ending, Raghnailt can feel it; but endings always last too long. She has felt her life has been on the verge of ending for a long time, and she knows that is the feeling that has ruined what life there was in her.

The violence is endless, she thinks. We are always on the edge of it, she thinks, falling into it, unbalanced by some gust of emotion, but no one should ever be in chains.