There are now two Gaels astride each horse. The oldest gives a yell and a sack is dropped. A legion of rats stream out of it, dispersing like smoke, flooding the town. There were perhaps fifty rats, and now, already, they are gone to ground. Terrified of the light, they will live beneath this town forever. William looks up once more and sees Alannah, in a blur, jumping up cleanly into the lap of one of the younger Gaels. Three Gaels on a single horse; they are a many-headed monster; a busy people. She has cut the hem of her dress to above her knees, he notices. The oldest Gael yells again and the Gaels start riding hard and the clatter of hooves is thunder inside William’s torn belly. He feels the earth’s trembling through his boots sending hot sparks up through his bones.

The most beautiful creature in the world is riding away, the woman he should have gone with, but he is not jealous. He wants for nothing; perhaps a sip of water. Happiness is flooding through him, and he smiles. He loves the air, loves it in his mouth, but now leave William with his small death, growing bigger inside him. He keels forward.

De Flunkl, on seeing the Gaels leave on his horses, slides back into the house and he is shocked to find that he can barely see the far wall of the little room for all the flies swarming about, can barely hear through the buzzing Mary crying over the nameless man, hugging him in her arms. The man’s neck is all angular and limp; a slim bone peeks sharply through the skin, jagged and red, a blue vein wrapped round it like creeping ivy, and de Flunkl averts his gaze from it. It is an intrusion into death too far, that sneaking bone, he feels.

‘Big Cat,’ she sobs. ‘Come back to me; I will be good this time.’

Harold Tuite is dead underneath her, too, his eyes blank and upturned. The three sacks of bodies above them look as though they are spectators at some gladiatorial sport. De Flunkl feels himself perfectly aligned with the scene, and he realises that if there is a victor it is him and only him, and this sets his heart beating fast.

‘I am the master of all this,’ he whispers.