Mary screams, but once the shock of the man’s weight has worn off, she becomes pliant and produces noises that seem to come from some far-off place rather than from herself. They are making love, Raghnailt realises with horror.

‘Stop this,’ Raghnailt says. ‘It is too much.’

The man lets out a howl, and thrashes around in the manner of a hooked fish, and Mary, annoyed at him for yelling so close to her ear, slaps his face. Raghnailt looks away, staring up at the ceiling, enshrouded in its dipping, inverted mountain range of cobwebs.

This habitation was always a frightful, decaying thing, but since Colca reached manhood he has accelerated its decline. The floor is a carpet of soft mud covered in footprints, and on this uneven floor there are, discounting the one now overturned, two jugs full of a substance whose origins and properties Colca has never disclosed to her.

She has asked him many times what they contain, but he only says they are ground meal that fetches a good price in the mountains, and she has often examined the fine, yellow substance, never understanding it.

The walls that enclose her life, even in the depths of this hot summer, drip with dark condensed water. Two bolts run through the wall, off which Mary’s chains hang. The furniture is old, broken and sparse, some tools piled in the corner, and two beds, stuffed to thickness with human hair and wool, on which three sheepskins apiece are employed for bedding. To complement the softness of the earth, a halo of meagre hay has been scattered on the floor for Mary to sleep on.

‘We used to be a proud house before you two came into it,’ Raghnailt says to the lovemaking couple.

This is a lie, but Raghnailt feels someone must say some words to this effect.

The man is gasping, his eyes upturned in his head showing only their whites. Mary recovers her senses sooner than her lover, and wraps a span of her chain round his neck and jerks at it, strangling him.

‘No, my love,’ he says, coughing. ‘It is I, Big Cat.’

The man, choking, tries to pry her fingers loose, and when this doesn’t work he begins scratching her face until her grip loosens. He unwraps the chain from his neck and gulps in air, and crawls away out of her reach. Thwarted, Mary screams and thrashes around in her hay.

‘I hope she kills you,’ Raghnailt says.

The man looks at her out of the side of his eyes, rubbing his throat; an uneven swelling already rising around his neck.

‘She is my wife,’ he says, ‘and she has her duty.’

‘You speak of her you as though she were something other than a child,’ Raghnailt says.

‘She is just mad, and madness has no age,’ the man replies. ‘Besides, she is a woman. Look at her body.’

He pulls down his own robes, covering his dripping modesty.