William of Roscrea is also blinded by a well of hot light from a gap between the heavy summer foliage, this absence made by a branch hanging solely from its sheath of bark that was, at some former point, struck by lightning. He blinks the glaring shine away and sees that four Gaels have run out of the woods, though maybe not, as they seem to always have been there from the steadfastness of their stance, the steadiness of their breaths. They hold the way ahead, which is also the higher ground.

Harold doesn’t know when this happened, nobody does. He drops his sack, and the procession comes to a halt.

An abrupt meeting – a gift from nature. The fox, far behind them, darts into the woods, the clatter of metal from inside the sack scaring it off, quelling its curiosity and alighting its self-preservation.

‘We wouldn’t have been warned if they wanted to take us,’ Harold says.

‘I know that,’ de Flunkl says. ‘Get the banner.’

The Gaels are all male, all bearded, all armed with spears. Their faces are sunburnt above their braided beards rounded off with beads. The front halves of their heads are shaved to the scalp and the hair behind grows long, beyond the shoulders. They have spirals painted onto their foreheads. Round their necks, hanging over their multi-coloured robes, are thin bronze chains that carry rudely carved wooden figurines, about the length of a hand, of circular women with no hair on their heads. Big-clitted women smiling little mysterious smiles out at the world, dragging the walls of their pussies apart, delighted with themselves. These little figurines are alien and puzzling, their facial features strangely sexless and vaguely surreal though non-threatening; their expansive vaginas twice as large as their already-oversized heads. That which lies beneath their heads, and above their gaping vulvas, is a minuscule torso; and de Flunkl is disgusted to see that not only are these little, wooden extra-terrestrial whores pulling their massive sexes apart, but that their long, apelike arms pass under their stretched legs at the knee to do so.

‘Ready yourselves,’ he remarks to Harold, who cocks his head absently, slanting his eyes so his nose becomes visible to himself, and wondering if these necklaces, merely, are literal representations of Gael women’s anatomy.

The Gaels, like their tokens, are also delighted with themselves. Untouched by the ravages of the sickness, they have become even more wandersome over the last three apocalyptic months, and their raiding, like their mourning and their weddings, is always strangely good-humoured. It is unsettling, their ways – good-humoured in times of strain and difficulty, ferocious in times of calm and mournful during feasts and while listening to musical refrains.