‘This man changes monikers more frequently than cuckoos change nests. What his real name is no one knows, but all the previous ones he has adopted have been wanted by many sheriffs. He is acclaimed and much wanted all over Cavan and Louth since the spring – when the recrudescence appeared, most fortuitously for him – for surprising, killing and collecting bodies. His infamy sprang up from the fact that after his liberal slaughtering he would have the gall to charge the very town in which he engaged in slaughter for the removal of the very corpses he himself produced – and he would be charging this damned town presently for our corpses if I had not warned you. He has lured many men into commerce with him with his easy, headlong manner; and then murdered them once they signed some poorly dated contract. Afterwards, he buries them with anonymity on his own lot. He robs the corpses he manufactures of their papers, their very clothes, and masquerades as all the men whose names he has confiscated. At every stage of the nefarious process he is well compensated. That is truth he spoke; we are not the first to Nobber to buy it up; but, with God’s blessing, we may be the first to leave it with breath still in our bodies.

‘He is the devil, as Harold’s premonitions so remarkably foresaw, and I am sure Ambrosio is only his latest incarnation. It is a name I am sure that has been stolen from a worthy and real Ambrosio that was slaughtered for the colour of his eyes and the fatness of his purse. There are no transactions you could carry out here that would bear out any legality in any court. There is only looting and banditry; the tears of maidens and the squalling of widows, and I have saved your worthless life by this intervention, even though you, de Flunkl yourself, are another form of scum, and to my greatest misfortune, you are the particular scum that has settled at the bottom of my soul.’

‘Colca,’ the man who was called Ambrosio yells. ‘Colca, come hither.’

‘What is the devil to do when his demons abandon him?’ William says. ‘This town is too strange even for one as evil and erratic as you to tame. You chose badly, man, when you came here and you chose badly when you took up with that farrier.’

‘You would take the word of a drunken slut over me?’ the man yells, his face bright red. ‘De Fonteroy, my partner, will be here soon. He will vouch for me.’

‘Another moniker, no doubt,’ Harold says. ‘Or perhaps, just another scoundrel. The land swells with them.’

‘You want the papers, serving man,’ the man says to Harold. ‘Here are the papers, look to them.’

He holds forth a roll of parchment wrapped strangely round his fist.