‘I am your daughter, and I am gone. There are no words that could keep me, and you are not the violent sort to restrain me – that is your son, and he would not mind to see me go.’

‘He will love you now,’ Raghnailt says. ‘He has been too violent with you, and neglectful of you where he shouldn’t be, but that will stop. Things will get better. He has sworn it. Mary has been taken away by the sallow man, and we are pure family once more. He will spend more time around the house with us; we will soften him with our company until he is made good again. We must build him anew, together, for you are my daughter and his wife, but we are more like sisters, the fun we have together, no?’

Alannah kisses her hand, growing even more enamoured with this woman now she is leaving her. ‘You believe that?’

Raghnailt nods.

‘You fill me with pity, but you must be strong,’ Alannah says. ‘Go to the door and see a long man succumbing to sunstroke and lust.’

Raghnailt shakes her head.

‘You already know?’ Alannah asks.

‘I know nothing, and I want to know nothing.’

‘It is important to not be weak.’

‘I am but an old woman who needs her daughter and her son to protect her,’ she says. ‘Allow me to be weak regarding my own family, my last joy.’

Alannah grabs her shoulders. ‘No, you are not that old. You are strong, but you want to be loved, and you think weakness provokes love? Norman women are shocking creations, snivelling bitches to a soul. How do you survive a day?’

‘Why are you being so mean to me?’

‘Because I love you. Go to the door now.’

Raghnailt shakes her head. ‘I will not.’

‘People are easy to leave behind,’ she says. ‘Our feminine natures breed sympathy in us like mushrooms that grow in the hollows of trees. The tree feels no harm is being done, but their life is sucked away without notice. Leave me behind, as I do you.’

Raghnailt’s eyes widen; she clutches at the bed. ‘You have gone mad,’ she says. ‘We have not loved you enough; it is our fault.’

‘Of course I have gone mad. The world is at war, no?’ Alannah says. ‘But we each have our own little apocalypse; everyone has their own one. Mine will come someday, and I would not be attached to someone like Colca while the Gaels grow stronger. He is a brute, and if anything is left in the world after this sickness it will be the Gaels. It does not touch us, because we are so free, so much ourselves.’

‘What nonsense,’ Raghnailt says. ‘What lies you say.’

Alannah does a turn around the room until she has calmed herself. She kicks at the hay. ‘I am sorry,’ she says. ‘I am so excited I am raving. Go look out in the street.’