‘There have been marauders passing through here,’ the man says. ‘I came from Trim this morning for a collecting of the dead and found several nobles much distressed and regretful for transferring lands at extortionately low prices, lands their populace will need in the coming harvesting seasons and lifetimes. I followed hot on their heels, hearing they were passing north, and have just come upon a scene of much carnage. A naked man, black as darkness, was hung off a machine of crows the townsmen had in their madness made, as an offering to something that I dare not name, and below this hanged man was an enormous and deep pool of blood in which living crows swam; there was another dead man, a holy and good one. They would not tell me his name, but I know him; he was a friend of mine, a good man; we had done much good business together, and, finally, a childish lunatic woman who drowned herself in a fountain. I knew they had other bodies, but they would not give them up. I did not collect the woman as there is amongst the town people some dispute on if she was a suicide, and I do not collect them.’

The trap rocks on its wheels slightly, creaking. Saint John looks up and can see that, under the dust on his face, the man has cold, bloodshot eyes. He looks a little more awake than anyone Saint John has ever seen before.

‘A woman cannot suicide in five hands of water,’ Saint John says.

The man shows his teeth in what could be a smile. ‘You said you had not passed through Nobber,’ he says.

‘Do you have such deep fountains in that parish?’ Saint John says.

‘I don’t like your lips or what comes out of them.’

‘Who are you to talk to me thusly?’ Saint John says. ‘I am a liveried man.’

‘I am Charles de Fonteroy and I collect the bodies of the neighbouring parishes, and I speak what I will. If it was you who oversaw this carnage in Nobber, I am leaving. I am old, unable for any struggles, and, if he is not still in hiding, I will inform the sheriff of this encounter and you will be hanged, even if it is just on the suspicion I will bring to bear on you. And, mark me, I will bring it to bear on you.’

‘It was not me,’ Saint John says. ‘I came in from the port of Dundalk this afternoon.’

‘Whoever you are,’ the man says, leaning over and spitting onto the ground, ‘do not pass through Trim. The people hate you.’