And then William’s internal eternity ends. He looks up and sees the markers of civilisation, Nobber, the dregs and remnants of this old place, the point that divides the fine ports of Drogheda from the more ragged wildernesses of the midlands.

They have finally come upon it, but between them and the town stands an enormous man, blacker than night, in a posture of greeting, his arms outstretched.

Harold salutes, and then halloos the man, but receives no response.

‘This, too, is strange,’ Harold says. ‘Perhaps he has been crucified into that posture, burnt into that colour. His body is ill-shaped, as though his spine has been broken and, many times, rearranged.’

De Flunkl squints at the figure in the distance, making a fan of his hands over his eyes to enhance his vision.

‘It is a blackened devil, mayhaps a Gael standing atop another Gael,’ de Flunkl says. ‘Ready yourselves for conflict.’

They approach cautiously, and the closer they get the more deformed and bloated seems the unmoving figure that guards the town.

An ash is …

An ash is growing in the house; in its middle, and it has become a point of some marital discord between Glynis and Aethelburga. She probably expects him to take care of it; I know by where she leaves her silences, he thinks, sipping his jug of ale, looking out the window. Was there an argument, though? He does not remember, and she is still playing with the children on the other side of the room, ignoring him.

‘Who is the goose, and who is the gander?’ Aethelburga sings, a child on her lap, the other giggling and burying itself beneath the hay, thinking it is hidden. He is sick of them all.

Their house is one-roomed, like all in the town with the exception of the mayor’s, and is the only one that has a window. When Glynis used to come in from the fields he would every day see his wife’s little face peeking out at him, framed greyly in the shade from which it stocked up the town’s incessant and merciless gossip. Now the window has been boarded up with a plank of wood, but still Glynis stares at it though nothing can be seen. He sits on his stool, his feet planted off the wall, drooling ale through loose lips. Perhaps it would be better if she died, he thinks. I would be a little freer then, and have more time to think the thoughts that do come upon me.

‘And where oh where will little Lady Goose wander?’ his wife sings.

‘Quiet,’ Glynis says.