He thinks of his duty to his guests, but not his wife. He would ignore her tantrum, the physical expression of her guilt. Momentarily, she hates him.

‘Oh,’ she says, ‘you think of everyone. A kind word for the whole town, but not for your own wife. Everyone but me, and what I ask of you.’

She had sucked Eoin Preston’s cock. He had played with her belly, run his fingers down it, like they were a little person walking. She had laughed, trembled. He tickled her, behind her knees, on her throat, circled her navel with his tongue. She had almost had a seizure she had had such pleasure from him. Her legs couldn’t stop shaking, could barely walk for an hour. It was last autumn, and she had done it twice. It had made her feel loose and warm.

And she had lied to herself during every part of it. It is just a walk, she had thought; just my hand; a kiss on the cheek; my breasts; just a finger, and by then it was happening. She hadn’t felt guilt at first. Afterwards she felt freer, more loving of Joseph, but then, day by day, seeing Joseph’s little kindnesses, his gentle idiocies towards her that were so full of love, her guilt grew until it made her feel ill in the mornings.

‘I will go to hell, and you will go to heaven,’ she says. ‘And then I will not be allowed to see you again.’

Without moving his head, Joseph turns his eyes up at her. He wants to vomit, but he cannot open his mouth; even his throat is too weak to push out whatever substance is growing inside him. Unmoveable things are stuck inside him. Already, his body is a carcass, but his mind moves. Fungus will grow on me, he thinks; it is so disgusting. She is almost invisible in this dark; he cannot see her any more.

‘I need a confession,’ she says. ‘And there are no priests left. I cannot—’

Segnat had given her some dried leaves, ground down and mixed with goat’s milk, and told her to take the third part of it; to hide by the Boyne, like a cat when it births. It was bitter, and left her teeth black, but she had drunk it all. She couldn’t keep it. She could never be sure, and the guilt was already too big, making her blind; sometimes she couldn’t breathe with it, would wake up crying, and Joseph would embrace her, hit her back until she was sucking air again; would ask her what was wrong, promising her everything would be fine.

‘Forgive me,’ she says. ‘It is your duty.’