Glynis placed his finger over his lips, and looked back out the window. After almost an hour of this terrible noise, Eoin Preston emerged from his house holding a long oak limb. He ran over and hit the nearest one on the back of the head with it, and then, just as quickly, he ran back to the far side of the street, pressing himself against the wall of a house. The infected he had hit, an elderly man wearing a mason’s apron, had fallen forward onto his hands and begun gurgling, and the other infected, seeing his fellow go down, limped hurriedly out of town, not looking back.

After some time, the old man sat up on his knees and Glynis saw that one of his eyes had come out of its socket and was hanging over his cheek bone. Glynis burst into loud laughter at the sight of this and the old man turned his head in a blind confusion to see where the noise was coming from.

‘What is it?’ Aethelburga had asked.

‘Hush now, I tell thee,’ Glynis said.

The old man began crawling to the fountain to wash his face, or to take a drink perhaps, but he collapsed on his front, and soon there was just the sound of his wordless moaning. Eoin Preston, terrified, still hadn’t moved from where he stood pressed against the wall of a house.

Another door opened across the street and Joseph appeared, striding not towards the infected man, but towards Eoin Preston.

‘You may finish killing a thing begun,’ Joseph shouted at him.

The two youths faced each other, Joseph the taller; and they stared each other down for a moment.

‘I have done a service,’ Eoin said.

‘This is your service?’ Joseph said.

‘We must stop the sickness.’

The old man was moving towards the fountain again, only using one leg and one arm to drag himself forward. Eoin hesitated for a moment, looked around, but did not let his gaze settle on the crawling man.

‘The water,’ Eoin had said. ‘It will be infected.’

‘You are a dog of a man,’ Joseph eventually said, seeing his inaction.

He took the oak limb from Eoin’s hands, and spat on the ground. Then the infected man, his arm having somehow come in contact with his own eye as he crawled, let out a high-pitched peal of panicked screaming. This renewed Glynis’s laughter, and he laughed so hard he spilled his jug of ale over his lap. When he looked up from his lap, he saw Joseph, the gentlest creature the town had ever produced, bringing down the end of the oak limb on the infected man’s head. There was a brief clicking sound, the man’s feet trembled, and then all movement stopped. Glynis laughed again, drooling ale from his lips.

‘What is happening?’ Aethelburga said, holding their two children under her arms.

‘The Gaels are coming,’ Glynis said, teasing her.