‘Will you stay here if I do?’ Raghnailt asks.

Alannah shakes her head. ‘Not a single moment more.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Raghnailt says.

‘You do.’

Raghnailt rises and goes out to the door. Down the street, she sees a young man lying on his back, moaning near the fountain; two new horses tied to a post; a small blond girl, bleached white in the light, presses against the walls of Toqville’s house. Her son also is there in the street, with the dead horse. She sees it and falls against the door, as though struck by a great force.

Colca turns his head towards her, his eyes shocked amidst the blackness of his face, and withdraws from the horse, lowering himself down so he is hidden, thinking himself unseen.

‘You would not keep me with your son, would you?’ Alannah says. ‘You are too good for that.’

She helps her mother-in-law back to the bed. There is no more emotion left in Raghnailt; her mind is empty; she will not clean the house today.

‘No.’

‘I love you,’ Alannah says.

Raghnailt nods.

‘I would ask you to not go outside today,’ Alannah says. ‘Stay indoors till nightfall. There will be some confusion released soon. You must stay inside.’

‘I will.’

‘Say farewell to me,’ Alannah asks, standing over her.

Raghnailt gazes at the webs on the ceiling. ‘I have just remembered it is Sunday,’ she says. ‘Do you think the sickness will end soon?’

Alannah doesn’t answer.

‘No matter how close to the end,’ Raghnailt says, ‘people still do their duty as much as they’re able, if they’re let. That is the proper way to live.’

‘If no one else knows how good you are, I will always know,’ Alannah says. ‘Kiss me farewell.’

‘My love for my boy has accumulated since the day he was born,’ she says, ‘it has only grown bigger. I want it to stop. Will it?’

‘I don’t know. How could I know?’

Alannah sits down next to her, brushes her mother-in-law’s hair back from her eyes.

‘Go, get out of this town,’ Raghnailt says. ‘You are young enough to begin once more. Leave me now.’

Alannah takes her hand and presses it to her lips. ‘I will wait with you a little while, Mother,’ she says. ‘I do not have to go just yet.’

‘That man is …

‘That man is an imposter of the grossest proportions,’ William of Roscrea says, ‘and he has killed many men, and even women. He has used the confusion of the sickness to remake himself as some official of the estate, but he is nothing but a vagabond pretender. The mayor is dead, and this rogue has driven the villagers into hiding by threatening to reveal their truth, which is that they, the villagers themselves, killed him, his wife and his son, in a mobbish fit after the outbreak of the sickness.