‘While it is a very fine thing to have a new madman about the town,’ Ambrosio says, ‘for they are very amusing and inventive and closer to holiness than we are, I would not have him interfere with my Mary in his madness. The knowing of another fool would perhaps sharpen her own madness through play, like blades running off one another, and I would not have that.’

‘The boy is a good boy,’ Harold says. ‘He does not interfere with girls, and even in his recent stupidity, his heart remains a generous one. One who is good is good in all things.’

Ambrosio smiles at this and continues to gaze at Saint John, who is looking up at the sky.

The sun is directly over Saint John’s head, and it is magical. He feels its sense, its power. He attempts to reach it, but his fingers fall short, though he feels the sky touch him. His shadow is short, squat and compressed below him. He breathes in and can feel the constituent parts of the earth in his nose, each filament of light distinct and beautiful, each mote of dust a swirling universe he wants to suck into his lungs. He has been looking at the sun without closing his eyes for several seconds, his instincts hampered, and he has become blind with its strong glowing and is crying heavily, but he does not heed it; even in his blindness there is something to be marvelled at. He keeps his eyes towards the sun.

‘There was a construction at the edge of town,’ William is saying, ‘like some creeping darkness; a thing of crows. Do you know it?’

‘I saw something in the distance,’ Ambrosio says, ‘but I am a very busy man; and have been all this morning doing some very important work. Lonely widows, truculent peasants, diseased nobles may have done it. I do not know. Brazen Gaels, perhaps. They are encroaching on the towns; drunk on our flailing about, they feel powerful, cocksure. They taunt us, put stupid spells on us that only idiots believe in. They have lost the God we gave them.’

‘But do you know what this thing is?’ William asks.

‘No, I do not know,’ Ambrosio says. ‘It must be new. I do not leave town any more. My master, de Fonteroy, brings me all I need, and takes away all that does burden me. One day I hope he will take me away.’

This man is rambling in a way that disturbs William. Perhaps he has been infected, he thinks.

‘Has this town been stricken?’ William asks.

Ambrosio waves his arms around, as though searching for an answer somewhere in his fingertips. He is about to speak when a chaffinch starts to sing and he pauses. When the chaffinch stops, he takes a breath.