He glances at the ash seedling in the middle of the room, not remembering when it sprang up, wondering if it is a little bigger now than the last time he noticed it. His scythe hangs in the corner, streaked pale with the sticky fluid of a thousand cut stems, dried now into stains, its blade dotted with pollen like the night’s stars.

‘Will you hush?’ he says, squinting at the wood that covers the window, and leaning into it, demonstrating that he is busy with watching. ‘The Gaels will hear us.’

Aethelburga falls silent; the children too, but for some reason she is the only one he can see; the children are a blur in his vision.

‘They are about,’ he slurs. ‘Creeping about; the little fools. I did see them slink through the street early this morning, before even the birds awoke. How am I to protect you with such noise? You draw them to us, and they are coming.’

He looks about himself, forgetting what he was to be about; and then sees the scythe again. He goes to raise himself from his stool, but the heaviness in his legs is a paralysis somewhere beyond drunkenness, and he slouches back, staring up at the scythe. He reaches to grab it, but it is much too far away. The seedling may live a few moments yet, he thinks.

The last time he used the scythe was twenty days ago, perhaps longer, he doesn’t know. Everything is dark in this house, and any natural division between the days has dissolved.

He had been out by Moynagh lake with the men, stripped down to the waist, trying to salvage what was already unsalvageable. The heat was enormous, in its tenth day, unseasonable for any May. Glynis’s hands were covered in blood, his cuts laced with sweat. The grass beneath him was crisp and foul-smelling, and it crackled when stepped upon. It hadn’t rained for a month. The hedged field in which they worked opened onto a forest, and from above, it would be as though one of its ends was infected by an incursion of hardwoods; that is where he scythed, on his own, on the outer edge of the other gatherers, anticipating the shade that would swing towards him in a few hours.

All the men of Nobber, about forty or so, were out cutting and gathering grain, the vast majority of which was for the bishop. All were hurried and full of fluster, and still the work was slower than usual. They seemed sullen that day. There was no singing; no one had raised a head since dawn.