‘The people do not hate me,’ Saint John says. ‘There are no townspeople who hate me. There are no townspeople. They are silent during these times, hiding amongst their own dead families, separate and alone amongst them. They are no longer of any town. They have been dissolved and individualised by the strife that you profit from.’

‘I say it again, the people hate you.’

‘Nobody hates me,’ Saint John says. ‘I have never done a hurt on anyone.’

‘You speak a lot for a young man. Too much,’ de Fonteroy says, and then he points the handle of his whip behind Saint John.

‘Is that for me? Produce the pennies for his removal, for that man who has had some ill hurt.’

Saint John turns round and looks at the slouched form of William of Roscrea, shaded under the dark red leaves of the maple tree. Horrified, he sees a slug is travelling across William’s cheek, leaving a glistening shine of slime that travels up his neck and across his chin. Saint John looks back at the trap stacked high with foul-smelling bodies.

‘No, he will not go with you. You will get no coins off me. I will bury him properly.’

Saint John listens to the birdsong, which has become louder and more frenzied since this odious slew of tangled, mobile death arrived in their midst.

‘If he was infected I must take him,’ de Fonteroy says, and it is like a question.

‘He was not infected. A Gael killed him.’

‘Gaels have never come through here, not for a hundred years,’ de Fonteroy says. ‘You are lying. Your eyes are unnaturally wide and I fear you, though you pretend to be some gentle lamb. You have either been touched by infection yourself or are drunk beyond proportion; or possibly this is the lunacy of fresh murder that can be glimpsed in your visage.’

‘Liar. You are a liar, and everything you say is lies,’ Saint John shouts. ‘I have been touched by a mystical vision beyond your schemes and it has shown me that you are a self-serving rogue. The scent of death that assaults me presently does not come from the bodies you carry, but from your own tainted flesh and the business you make with it.’

‘Like I said, I am old, though I was young this morning,’ the man says, stretching his hands to the sky and cricking his neck. ‘And if I was still young I would throw you on the top of this trap and pour lime in your eyes till it burnt your brain out. But I am old now, and your youthfulness and energy shine out of your roving, lunatic eyes that scatter their gaze everywhere. But I swear this, if that thin man under that tree was not infected, then you are a murderer and that poor lad was murdered at your hand. So, I am leaving.’