‘Please excuse me, sir,’ he says, covering his mouth with his hand. ‘I do not agree with this lowly man and I certainly don’t wish to offend you, sir, but there is something you said that set me tittering. Yes, the world is against you. It is against us all, but, surely you know there is only one thing in this deathly room that will survive even twenty years and that is the two coins that warm my palm. No, sir,’ Ambrosio continues, looking at the coins in his open hand. ‘No offence given, but these are all that shall be carried through the ages. The property deeds that teem within your sack, all bunched up, flutter and fade into nothingness. Property is disputed, its borders coerced. Names are changed. Land becomes forest, or barren, or desert, or bog. But these few pounds, they will pass from hand to hand, fluctuating, devalued, reminted, but eternal in the value internalised within them, because as long as there are three men in a room’ – he glances at Harold Tuite momentarily, then at de Flunkl – ‘though the whole world is dead, and those three men all agree that it is worth cutting each other’s throats for these, these coin shall last. And because they agree to it, there will be a power maintained in acquiescence to it that can harden and maintain its value.’

‘This man is completely and utterly insane,’ Harold says, ‘and I have not yet understood a word he has spoken.’

‘Oh, I’m no fool,’ Ambrosio continues, looking up at Harold, ‘don’t mistake me. Money is the king’s estate and the king’s estate is almost broken, but it will remain because there is no vision beyond it. Not that the king has any vision. Forgive me, but he is injudicious and weak, and yet he is the recipient of a larger vision into which he falls accidentally. It is his birth right: this accidental, enormous inheritance. But his face is on these coins and they are the remnants of some older people’s vision that cannot be abnegated with a mere word, or some fleeting desire.’

Ambrosio has become frenetic again. He slams the coins down on the table. Everything is silent for a moment. The coins shudder and spin on the wood until they come to rest in stillness.

‘Whether we be with the king or against him,’ he says, ‘we are all for the face stamped on these pounds, which is his. Who else’s could it be? What face could withstand such tumultuous exchange but his? All the legions of Babylonian whores could not withstand the wear and the friction of having been passed between men as much as his two faces on that table there.’ He points at the pounds. ‘What could replace it? The money is not the king, but the king is the money. They are intertwined forever. What can replace it?’