‘You will do it, so?’ de Flunkl asks, putting the map away and then picking out two big, misshapen pounds from the pile of miscellaneous rubble in the bottom of the sack.

He stretches his back, rubs the pounds together, hearing them scrape, and flicks them, with forced casualness, onto the crowded desk where they scatter under the sheaves of half-folded parchments. Ambrosio finishes off his mug, leaning his neck back so far he seems like a stork tossing live fish down itself, and then throws his mug into the barrel where it splashes, jellyfishing to the bottom as the air is expelled out of it in downward thrusts.

Ambrosio picks up the pounds and scrapes them together.

‘How many properties and acres have you bought so far on this innovative trek?’ Ambrosio asks. ‘I must ask for I am wholly in awe of you.’

‘Too many,’ Harold says, ‘and we have only been travelling three days.’

‘The specific number is immaterial,’ de Flunkl says, his chest puffing up with pride, ‘and does not regard the business at hand; but you may rest assured it is in the many thousands, more lands than could be ridden over in a day.’

Ambrosio licks his upper lip, removing a drop of liquid from beneath his nose. ‘That such a little sack could contain so much of this country,’ he says.

‘And what do your sacks contain?’ Harold says, pointing at the three shrouds slouched in the chairs.

‘Will you oversee the transaction?’ de Flunkl asks, ignoring Harold. ‘We have checked the flurries of obituaries occurring in the townlands that will be transitioned back to the king unless there is a counterclaim.’

‘The Bishop of Armagh still oversees Leafin,’ Ambrosio says, ‘and Muff, but you will still have your killing. I will transact it, but I would ask you another question first.’

He leans against the table, perhaps to hide his drunkenness; Harold has already noticed him discreetly stumbling once or twice.

‘Ask away,’ de Flunkl says.

‘What are you afraid of?’

‘What?’ de Flunkl says. ‘I am not afraid.’

‘You are,’ Ambrosio says. ‘You twitch and tremble and your voice does crack. I thought at first it was your youth, which is always a turbulent experience, but now I regard that there does seems to be some greater turbulence within you? You seem unsure of your own genius. You are so in fear I can smell it off you. You are incomplete.’