‘Yes, I apologise for her nettlish words. But she is not right in the head: remark on her strained visage,’ Ambrosio says, holding his hands together like he is praying, his wide smile seemingly permanently fixed. ‘My beloved has been vinegared in strong cider since she was conceived, born to a born renegade, a drunken bitch of unholy proportions. I am some days sure the fetid fluid that suspended my goodly wife in her mother’s womb was entirely alcoholic in nature, and I am sure that if the umbilical cord that fattened her growing body had been squeezed it would have produced a veritable shooting fountain of whiskey, and, needless to say, she continued her fermented diet the moment she was born and it has loosened the flesh around her eyes somewhat and given her a peppery, tired look. Though, I may add, the repetitious waves of fierce, gripping pox did not abet matters. As a Christian man, naturally, I took pity on her and married her some three years ago. Her mother had been using her very ill, and I fear to think what would have happened had I not taken her. You see, I protect her. I have always done so, and will always do so.’

He is still smiling, and, somehow, he has smiled the whole way through his monologue, but William can see his eyes are distressed and searching, looking everywhere but his own wife. There is something desperate and hopeless in this man, William feels.

‘Very interesting,’ de Flunkl says. ‘We must discuss that soon at our leisure, but presently, do you know where the mayor is at?’

‘As fortune would have it,’ he says, ‘I am the absent mayor’s delegate. My lord is away on business in Dublin, and the Bishop of Armagh who usually oversees this fine village, amongst others, is, likewise, engaged. I believe he is in court in another part of Dublin addressing unpaid tithes and a case of a yeoman who still refuses to pay some nineteen horseshoes in taxes.’

He laughs as though he has made a joke and then looks at Saint John, who is acting strangely, and cocks his head at him. ‘Is that boy right in the head?’ he asks.

‘I believe he has fled sanity, at least internally his humour has gone that flighty way, and I believe he did it to escape this cursed town,’ Harold says.

‘As has the sanity of the man who presently speaks,’ de Flunkl says. ‘Do not respect this gruff man’s insolence and his insult towards your very fine town, I pray you,’ he continues to Ambrosio. ‘He is not well in the head, either. Much grief has stricken him into idiocy; at least that is my overly generous opinion of the lowly brute.’