Above its shimmering body, well reflected, are high clouds that bunch up to the south and move towards him. They are so thick that they look like another, higher world, one with its own intricacies and mysteries, one that is softer and more caring, and for a moment the vast consciousness of the world is something Saint John can feel shake through him. A warm breeze runs through his clothes, pleasant against the sweat that has crystallised into sparkling salt on his chest. The grass shivers; the lake is unsettled slightly, and then a stench destroys his calm; a sick smell that floats over everything, making him gag and retch with its power.

Behind him, the loose jingling of rocking bells gets louder. He hears the clipping of hooves and the crack of a whip. He turns round and sees a dwarfish man, bald, with hawkish eyes, sitting on a trap drawn by two horses. Garish red bells hang from their manes. The man is well dressed, though he wears comically large pointed boots. He is covered in dust and yellow pollen from his travels and the trap he draws is piled high with dead, splayed bodies. There must be thirty behind him, spanning the height of two men.

The trap draws to a halt and the old man motions him over. ‘Boy,’ the man says, ‘were you in Nobber earlier today?’

Saint John looks at the trap and sees, somewhere amongst the bodies piled on, Harold Tuite lying facedown, his bushy beard noticeable amongst the more nondescript shrouds that are stacked in untidy heaps beneath him. Near a decaying woman, there is a man who Saint John has a vague recollection of. He remembers seeing his dismembered head floating somewhere, though the memory is like a dream and the face is now very different, horribly transfigured. It is a monkish blond man in capuchin robes whose whole face is now purple, and he bares bloody teeth, snarling angrily at the world with hungry, open eyes.

‘No, sir. I am just come upon this place.’